Silence
by gf7
Summary: Nathaniel's usually the one hurt or sick. Wash is usually the one taking care of him. Three times their roles are reversed, and how these times tell the story of the evolution of their relationship over fourteen years.
1. Chapter 1

_**Author's Note: Returning to my forte here - dramatic angst. This chapter takes place in the past, but the next 2 will kick us up to Terra Nova. Enjoy, and please let me know what you thought of it.**_

* * *

><p><em>2136. Somalia<em>

It's six months into her first tour of duty with Nathaniel Taylor' cleanup team (as folks around the base have begun calling their little strike fast and forceful unit) before she suffers her first real potentially life threatening injury.

Not that she hasn't catalogued a few lesser wounds to date. None of them really all that big of a deal though. On the battlefield, a soldier learns to get used to bruises, breaks and tears. They're just part of the daily grind – you're not alive if you're not bleeding from somewhere or another is the joke around the campfire.

More than that, though, exhaustion and bone-deep fatigue have become almost constant companions to her. Something she has learned to recognize and walk with, albeit reluctantly.

Not until this war is over anyway. Once it is, and assuming she lives through it, she's planning on a very long nap somewhere. Maybe on a beach inside one of the domes. Yeah, the idea of using some of the money she's been stocking away (soldiers on the front line tend to make a pretty penny especially if they can survive for a few years) on a long vacation sounds like one hell of an idea.

Assuming she can make it that long, of course.

It's an almost idealistically easy thought to have until everything changes in the time it takes for her to feel an impossibly sharp blade slide into her exposed side, cutting into her flesh as if it were nothing tougher than butter.

Years later, while recovering from her war-ending injury in a medical hospital in Germany, she'll realize that getting stabbed is like getting a splinter in your hand compared to taking multiple bullets to the chest, but for now, this hurts like hell.

Yeah, this (both the pain and the realization that she could _actually_ die before this is all over) is worse than anything she's ever felt before. So much worse.

She's the somewhat still fresh-faced combat medic for the unit, but in this war, that hardly takes her out of the line of fire. No, here in Somalia, medics are front line just like everyone else. They're expected to know how to kill and cover just like everyone else. Most soldiers know, though, how important their medic is.

Especially when they're good.

And Alicia Washington is very, very good.

Ballsy, courageous and loyal beyond words. There isn't a man or woman in this unit that she wouldn't shield with her body in order to protect.

Because of that, there isn't a man or woman in this unit who wouldn't do the same for her without even thinking about it.

Tonight, though, it's a bit too late to worry about someone stepping in front of a knife for her. What's done is done.

Good thing is, the wound might hurt like hell, but chances are strong that she's going to survive it as long as they can slow the blood flow. It's something she realizes as she's instructing her CO on how to clean and inspect the wound. Funny thing is; she's pretty sure he knows how to do this, but he's letting her talk him through it. It takes her a few minutes for her to realize that this is his way of ensuring that she stays with him during the process. Conscious and aware.

She'd be touched by his concern (until she'd joined this team, not many people had cared if she'd lived or died beyond being a number on a piece of paper) if she wasn't in so damned much pain.

"Okay, looks like it's pretty clean," Nathaniel Taylor tells her. "Knife went in and out. Looked like it was a regular one, no edges. You've lost some blood, but not too much. I think you'll be okay." It doesn't escape her that their positions are usually reversed. She's typically the one cleaning up his wounds and telling him what the damage looks like. Funny how war tends to flip things around.

"Good," she breathes. "You'll need to disinfect the wound and…and…" her mind blanks as another wave of pain crashes through her.

The injury had occurred maybe twenty minutes earlier. Perhaps more, she's not terribly sure anymore. She'd been trying to drag one of their downed men back to the safe zone behind the line, and had gotten too locked into what she was doing. Too focused.

She should have been smarter, more aware of her surroundings. Instead, she'd been concentrating on trying to figure out how much time the kid – a twenty-year-old named Price – had left on his play-clock. He'd been bleeding heavily, six bullets piercing his chest. Which most likely meant death – especially this far from base and in the middle of a no-evac possible until morning mission.

She'd allowed her mind to wander, forgotten the fact that in war, people don't stop shooting at you once you're down – or if you're a medic.

She'd never seen the enemy soldier come up behind her, never felt his presence.

Stupid. Silly. Nearly fatal.

What she had heard had been Taylor scream out her name. And then she'd felt the blade enter her side, sliding right into the gap between her armor plating and her cargo pants. A small opening that she'd exposed when she'd bent over to pull Price to safety. One plenty big enough for a K-Bar to do its damage.

She'd cried out.

She hadn't meant to, but the pain – a ridiculously hot flash of agony rushing up through her nerve endings – had so surprised her that she hasn't been able to stop herself from letting out a short sharp cry.

After that, she'd heard the sound of bullets popping, and then felt warm blood – her attackers' – splatter on her face as her would be killer had taken several shots to the head. A couple moments later, she'd felt herself being dragged back to the safe zone - small area of trench down below a heavy row of trees.

That's when she'd realized that it'd been Taylor who had grabbed her and pulled her to safety. Probably Taylor who had taken out the guy who'd stabbed her.

Distantly, over the sound of her own heartbeat (oddly very loud suddenly) she'd heard him speak to another solider who had followed them down. She'd heard him say, "I got this, Private. I'll take care of her. Stand guard."

"Yes, sir," the Private had answered, moving away.

"Wa…wait" Wash had grunted. "Price. Where is he?"

"Dead, ma'am," the Private had replied, sadness in his eyes. And then, with a nod to Taylor, he'd climbed back up to the top, crouching down to keep a close eye out for anyone or anything coming close.

And now, here they are, she and her CO of six months, down in the trench together. Divested of her armor and most of the shirt that she'd been wearing beneath it, she shivers a bit as she watches as he disinfects the gory knife wound with a greenish liquid, his fingers covered in her bright red blood.

"What were you thinking, Wash?" he asks suddenly, his tone sounding somewhat conversational. She knows better, though. They haven't known each other long, but still, she knows his speaking rhythms, and the one he's using on her right now is his simmering one. He's pissed at her, and just barely controlling it.

"I wasn't, sir," she admits, gritting her teeth as the greenish disinfectant bubbles within her, sending a cool spray of cleaning foam down her exposed side. She refuses to cry out again. Once was enough. She can still feel his fingers on her, moving along the edges of the wound. "I was just trying to get to Price."

"Price was already dead."

"I didn't know that. And it's my job to try to –"

"It's your job to stay alive," he snaps.

She meets his eyes, her pained dark ones locking on his angry blue ones. "No, sir, with all due respect, sir, it's my job to take care of all of you. To do whatever I can to keep you alive."

"Me, huh?"

He catches her off-guard with that. Yes, she's spent a good chunk of her time since joining his unit tending to his various wounds, and yes, for whatever reason, his safety means more to her than even her own. But no, specifically, she hadn't been calling him out there. Right?

Unable to come up with a good answer, she instead replies with a smile that's more of a grimace thanks to the pain surging through her.

He shakes his head. "Tell me then, how well do you think you're going to be able to do that job when you're dead, huh?"

He's overreacting, she thinks. He's used to his men getting hurt. It's part of war. And sure, he's always a bit pissy about it, but this seems like so much more. She tells herself that it's about her role, nothing more.

"I'm not dying, sir. It's not that deep," she answers, her hand going down to touch the wound. Before it can get there, he catches her hand with hers, squeezing it.

"Which might make a bit of difference if we weren't on a no-evac possible until morning mission. Look around you, Wash, you see blood bags we can use for transfusions? You see a surgical bed? Didn't think so. If this were a bleeder, there'd be nothing I could do besides close your eyes." He leans in, his voice lowering as he continues, "And dammit, Wash, I do not want to do that."

"I'm sorry, sir," she replies, wincing and pressing her eyes closed as pain rushes through her again. She can feel the heavy weight of exhaustion settling on her like a steel-toed boot to the chest. She wonders idly if this is what he feels like every time he gets hurt like this. Is it always so terrifying? So draining?

"I know you are," he answers, his voice softening as if to suggest that he recognizes that he's won. Still, he can't quite let it go. "But you have to be smarter. We need you. This team doesn't work without you."

"Yes, sir," she says, not feeling up for arguing with him. She doesn't really believe that this unit would fall apart without her, but it's nice to hear.

"All right, I need to stitch you up now."

"You know how?" she asks, eyes opening back up, her eyebrow lifting slightly.

He shrugs. "Can't be so hard. I watch you do it every day."

"On you," she shoots back. "Have you ever actually stitched anyone else up?"

"Time or two," he chuckles. "I don't have your touch, though."

"No?" she asks wearily, though she already knows the answer. Nathaniel Taylor does many things better than anyone else ever will, but no one will ever accuse him having a gentle – or comforting - touch about anything.

And yet, at least to herself, she admits that she's comforted by his mere presence. He could have had one of the other men stitch her up. Any one of them would have done it. But no, he'd insisted on doing it himself.

"Afraid not, but it'll have to do." He leans over and starts to work on stitching up her side. He's right; his touch isn't gentle, but it is warm, and even though it hurts, she welcomes his fingers knitting her skin together.

She sighs and leans her head back, her vision swimming in front of her eyes. Time seems to slide away from her as does consciousness every couple of seconds. It feels a bit like she's swimming, going up and down in the water. Every time she breaks the surfaces with a pained short gasp, her tired eyes settle on him, watching as he continues sewing her back together. It's such a familiar sight even if it's usually her stitching him.

"There we go," he says finally. "Not pretty, and it'll need to be redone once we get back to camp tomorrow, but it'll do for tonight. You won't bleed out." He presses a bandage over the wound, quickly taping it down.

"That's good," she answers, her eyelids drooping. For a moment, it seems as though she's completely succumbed to the pain and exhaustion.

Or something worse, he thinks with sharp alarm.

"Yes, it is," he replies absently, his fingers sliding up to check her pulse. They don't use any kind of electrical equipment down here – it's much too easy for the enemy to track and trace it them through it. "Okay," he says after a few moments. "I'm going to give you something to help the pain."

She shakes her head, the motion exaggerated by her fatigue and sudden inability to control her own muscles. "What if I'm needed?" She's slurring her words now. "I need to be…"

"Right now, what you need to do is rest, Wash. I'm not having you work on anyone. Last thing I want is you accidentally stitching their hand to their ass."

She chuckles. He does, too.

She feels him use a hypo to insert drugs into her, the effects almost immediate. There's something to be said about twenty-second century meds. Especially the battlefield variety. They do their job, and they do it well. Within moments, she's feeling no pain at all. It's strange and weird and kind of unsettling.

She feels him drape a thermal blanket over her. "Keep it on," he tells her. When she doesn't reply, and he realizes that she's pretty much dropped off, he turns to the young Private who has reappeared. "Keep a close eye on her, she worsens in any way, you get me immediately."

"Yes, sir."

"And, Private, don't let her kick off the blanket."

"No, sir," the Private answers, smirking slightly. There's a bit of a joke around the unit about how even during the coldest nights, when it's her turn to sleep down in the trench, she has a bad habit of kicking off the blankets.

Taylor nods at the soldier, casts one more worried look back at his sleeping medic, then crawls back up to the top, gun in hand.

Throughout the night, Taylor repeatedly crawls back down into the safe-zone trench to check on her. Each time, with varying degrees of amusement, he notices that even though she's dead out, sleeping soundly under the heavy weight of the drugs, she's kicked off the thermal blanket.

Each time, he checks the wound, the stitches, the bandages, and then as he pulls the blanket back up over her (knowing for sure that both he and the Private will be doing this over and over for the rest of the night), he runs his fingers across her pulse point. Only then, once he's satisfied that she's doing okay does he let out a breath that he didn't know he was holding back.

The young Private sees it all, but never speaks of it to anyone.


	2. Chapter 2

_**Author's Note: Thanks for all of the kind words. As always, creative license has been taken. Enjoy.**_

* * *

><p><em>2143. Terra Nova.<em>

In spite of the inherent danger in doing so, he'd laugh if she wasn't so pissed.

And if the situation wasn't quite so dire.

Unfortunately, it is.

They're in the middle of the jungle, and it's getting dark quickly, and now, they're going nowhere fast thanks to her having lost her footing as she'd tried to jump from rock to rock.

Right now, much to her embarrassed chagrin, she's lying sprawled out on her back on the floor of the riverbed – thankfully it's shallow – her left foot twisted beneath her, most likely broken considering the awkward bend of it.

She's wet, hurt and angry.

Not a great place to be for either of them if past experience is any kind of teacher. Which, when it comes to Alicia Washington, it usually is.

"Wash," Nathaniel Taylor calls out as he jumps down next to her, his boots sinking into the wet mud even as it splashes up around them. "You okay?" He settles a hand on her right forearm, helping her to sit up.

"Fine," she grunts as she settles herself awkwardly and uncomfortably into the sitting position. As she angrily brushes mud off of her clothes, he can't help but wonder if she's more embarrassed than hurt.

Only recently had the two of them come back together after several long years going in different directions.

Once the war in Somalia had ended, they – as well as the other few survivors from their unit – had gone their own ways. She, after a grueling recovery, had stayed in the service, taking assignments throughout the world – always moving around, rarely staying in the same place for too long. A military psychologist would recognize this pattern as symbolic of typical war guilt – don't stop moving or else you'll start thinking about everything you had to do to survive.

He, on the other hand, hadn't had much time to dwell on sins or think about the past. He'd been attached to the Terra Nova project from day one. There hadn't been a single piece of the new world colony that he hadn't had his hands in – including deciding on who would join him in the command structure.

Having agreed to join him, she had stepped through the portal mere minutes after her had. She should have come through right behind him, but a bizarre temporal glitch – or something else incredibly complicated and scientific like that - had slowed everything down. He had come through one hundred and eighteen days ahead of everyone else, and had lived off and with the land during that time. Because of that, he has a weird sort of kinship with. One she doesn't yet share.

That's not why she's embarrassed, though. He knows her, knows her well enough to know that this is all about him. After all their time together, and all they've gone through, she still can't handle looking weak in front of him. She needs him to know that she can handle her own, that she can be his back.

It's one of the reasons he's so fond of her. She's stubborn and bull-headed. And ferociously loyal. They're pretty much kindred like that.

He leans down to inspect her foot. "Broken?" he asks, one of his fingers gently and lightly touching her boot. He's careful not to add any weight to his hand, not wanting to cause her additional pain.

"Not sure," she admits with a wince, her hand reaching down to catch his. Because she's fighting like hell to control her facial expressions, the wince exhibits more like a grimace. "Can't move it, but it could be just a bad sprain."

"Doubtful," he says. "That's not a good turn you have going on there." He indicates towards the odd way her foot is bent backwards. "But it's nothing we can't fix up back at Terra Nova."

"Great. Then let's get going," she answers, her tone dry and almost petulant. They both know that in spite of her words, she's not walking anywhere – especially not across this incredibly uneven and amazingly treacherous land at night – on a broken or even sprained foot.

He chuckles." Not so fast, Wash. Once we get to high ground, we can radio in and try to get a pick-up, but until they show up, we need to find a place to camp."

She nods her understanding of his words, then offers him her hand. He shakes his head in bemused amazement, and instead kneels down, and slides an arm around her. Slowly, he starts to pull her to her feet.

Almost immediately (and not at all surprisingly), she hitches painfully as her foot straightens out and blood rushes to it.

"Nathaniel," she grinds out as a flare of agony radiates up her leg. Without meaning – or wanting to – she reaches out and grabs onto his jacket, her fingers digging frantically into the thick leather as she rides out the wave of pain booming through her. If someone were to come by and see them, it would very much look as though she were turned into his chest.

"Wash?" he replies, his lip quirked slightly. He knows she's in pain and he hates that, but he can't help but find something vaguely amusing about his ordinarily super composed and put together lieutenant grabbing onto him like this.

How times have changed, he thinks to himself, remembering her first serious injury way back in Somalia. Even then, she'd tried to be strong and tough, but not like this. Back then, back before all that she'd done by his side, she'd still found pain to be something of an aberration, something closer to an abomination.

Now, much like himself, she recognizes pain as something that she's walked more than a few miles with. Not quite a friend, but not exactly an enemy.

He's pulled out of his thoughts by the sound of her growling out, "Just get me up."

"Yep." He pulls her the rest of the way up, watching as she tries to put weight down on her foot. It's clear immediately that it's a no-go. "Can you get up the hill with me?" he asks, looking around for the easiest way up. One of the sides looks to have a few more areas to step on, less chance of another watery slip.

"Don't really have a choice," she tells him with an annoyed shake of her head. That's when he realizes that somewhere along the way, she'd lost her ponytail holder. Her dark hair is now flowing down over her shoulders.

"I could carry you," he offers.

If looks could kill, he's pretty sure he'd be floating belly up in the river.

"No, sir," she snaps back. "That's not needed, sir." She's practically biting off her words, pride shining angrily in her eyes.

"Easy, Wash," he chuckles.

She looks up into his eyes, and sees the familiar old teasing there. She lets out a breath, allowing the angry insulted tension to roll away from her shoulders.

"Stubborn woman."

"Learned from the best, sir," she says, a small smile on her lips.

"Yes, I suppose you did. All right, if you're going to insist on walking it up yourself, at least let me have some of the weight." He meets her eyes when he says this, letting her know that despite the light tone he's using, his last words are more of an order than a request.

"Fine."

And so like that, his arm looped around her and she moving on one foot, slowly, they make their way up a muddy hill, to the top.

Remembering from his travels around here that there's a small clearing a short ways up, he leads them in that direction.

Once there, he kneels down and gently helps her lay down on the dirty ground, her leg stretched out in front of her. He glances around and finds a large log, almost like pre-cut firewood. He rolls it to her, and lifts her foot up atop it.

"You good?"

"Yeah, fine. We need to get a fire started," she says, glancing up at the rapidly darkening sky. The amount of daylight they have left can probably be measured in minutes now. Which means that it won't be long before the animals around here start waking up and looking around for food.

"I'll gather the wood." He points to the backpack that she's slowly peeling off of her. It's soaked and muddy on the outside, but inside, everything is probably just fine thanks to heavy military grade insulation. "Try to get Guz on the radio."

She nods her agreement, then unzips the backpack, pulls out the radio, and starts trying to contact the colony.

He's gone for maybe five minutes, and when he returns, it's with his strong arms full of wood. "Anything?" he asks as he builds the fire, using her Zippo to light it.

"No. Comm systems seem to be down again," she sighs as he sits down next to her. It's been a repeated problem for them during the early days of setting up the colony. Very few of their systems have gone – or stayed - up without problem.

Which is probably why no one had been all that thrilled about the two of them taking this day trip out to scout around the land for places to build radio towers.

They're not far from camp, less than three miles, but absent a vehicle (there's currently only two rovers in camp, and there'd been no need to use one for this trip out) and with her on an injured foot, it's simply safer to stay where they are.

Too many big bad nasty dinosaurs tend to come out at night looking for prey that might make a tasty treat. Right now, being where they are with a massive fire roaring is the best possible way to stay safe and sound until morning.

"When we're not back by morning, they'll send a search party," Taylor tells her unnecessarily as he leans over to adjust her foot on the log. She considers telling him to stop fussing, but stops when she thinks about all the times that he's said the same thing to her. All the times she's ignored him. _Weird_, she thinks to herself, _how__we__'__ve__just__seemed__to__fall__so__effortlessly__into__old__patterns._

"Guz is probably throwing a fit," she sighs. She tries to add a chuckle, but the mirth doesn't quite reach her eyes.

"Probably," he agrees before pulling off his own backpack. Inside of it is a light jacket, extra ammo, some MREs, another radio, a knife, a thin blanket and a field medical kit. He hands the kit to her. "Anything in there that can help you?"

"Not really. My boot is keeping it splint right now as well as anything else would," she says, indicating towards her own kit, which is on the ground in front of her.

"What about the painkillers in there?"

"Don't want them," she replies as she slips her own thin jacket on over her shoulders. As the last rays of sun vanish completely, the temperature is dropping dramatically. And it's going to get a whole lot colder before the night is over.

"You never have."

"You're one to talk," she retorts.

"True," he admits with a shrug and a lazy effortless smile. Then he holds up an energy bar. "Hungry?"

"No, sir."

"Not at all? We haven't had anything to much on all day."

"I'm fine, sir."

"All right, Wash what's eating you?" he demands, turning to face her, his gaze intense and practically burning a hole right into her.

She considers lying to him, telling him it's nothing, but the way he's looking at her, his concerned eyes brilliantly aglow thanks to the fire, there's really no point.

He sees right through her. He always has.

"You survived one hundred and eighteen days out here. My third trip OTG and I'm falling like an idiot, and breaking bones." She shakes her head in disgust.

"You're a medic, Wash."

"I'm a soldier, sir." There's defiance and pride in her tone. She's never seen herself as just a medic, and he knows it. The only reason he'd said it at all had been to get a rise out of her. He likes her better pissed off at him than angry and disappointed with herself. He knows how to deal with the former, but has no real idea how to help her with the latter.

"Yes, you are, Lieutenant, and a damned good one at that. It's why I brought you here. It's why I wanted you here. Wet dirt and slippery rocks don't change that. What happened today could have happened to anyone. Including me."

"But it didn't."

"Maybe it did."

She tilts her head. "Sir?"

"You remember what I said about half a second before you fell?

"Watch your footing, that one doesn't hold well," she remembers with a dry humorless smile.

"There might be a reason I know that," he chuckles, amused as only he can be about a past injury. "I found that little stream during my first week here. And I ended up on my ass just like you. Only difference was I didn't break anything. I did give myself a few fun scars, though." He gestures down at his leg. "Hip to knee. Bled like you wouldn't believe."

He doesn't miss the way her back stiffens up at his words. She doesn't miss his grin. She's long suspected that he gets a kick out of her reactions to his wounds.

"Point is, Wash, even the best of us misstep time to time. Let it go."

She nods slowly, hesitantly. He knows better, though. She'll let it go on the surface, but deep down, she'll grind on it. And she'll make sure that she never misses or slips on that rocky step over the river ever again.

For a long while after that, neither says a word. This is far from the first time they've been out in the middle of the wilderness together. Sure, Somalia hadn't been quite this kind of jungle, but there still had been nights when they – along with their unit – had sat around a fire telling jokes and stories. Enjoying the company of each other in a way that can only occur between people whose lives have been bound together through blood, sweat, steel and gunfire.

For both of them, tonight feels a bit like they're remembering each other. Since she'd come through the portal a few months earlier, their interactions have been mostly work orientated. There's been so much to do around Terra Nova, and so little time for rest and relaxation. And for conversations about the past.

They have their chance now.

Weird how neither of them really wants to talk much about Somalia.

Instead, he opens with, "So, I never did get a chance to ask, what happened to that painter boy you were with for a bit? Almost a year, yeah?"

"You knew about him?" she asks, looking over at him, her eyebrow up.

"Course. I kept tabs on you. Wanted to make sure you were recovering well."

She doesn't even pretend to be surprised. "Then you already know what happened with that…painter boy."

"Shame. Seemed like a good kid."

She shrugs; she's never had much use for kids. She's been through too much to be able to settle down with someone who still sees the world in shades of brilliant colors like those on a painters' canvas. He had been a nice distraction, but in the end, that'd been all he'd been. Realizing that, she'd let him go.

"How's Lucas?" she asks changing the subject.

"Things have been rough between us ever since Ayani... " he momentarily stutters against being able to say the word "died" and finally instead settled on, "…since what happened." He blames me."

"It wasn't your fault."

"It was," he answers firmly, leaving no room for further argument. "But hopefully I can make that up to him. He'll be coming out on the next pilgrimage."

"It'll be good to see him again," she says, thinking about his son – a man about her age – that she'd met a few times when Taylor had brought her back to his place during their brief leaves. Lucas had been intense, but a generally good kid.

"Yeah," Taylor agrees, a small frown marring his face. She thinks for a second that she sees a storm literally pass through his suddenly turbulent eyes, but then he blinks and it's gone, his face one again betraying no emotion beyond that which he chooses to show. Which right now is none.

They fall back into silence, this one a bit heavy as they both think about all that they've left behind. He'd needed Terra Nova because there'd been nothing else left for him in that world. She'd needed it because absent the war and a purpose, she'd felt like she'd just been going through the every day motions of living.

At the thought of that, a small shiver goes through her. It's part memory, part cold, part pain. It winds from the base of her spine all the way up her, making her shoulders shake and her teeth chatter.

"Wash?" he asks, blue eyes full of concern.

"I'm fine," she lies. She pulls the thin blanket out of her own backpack.

"It's freezing out here, and you're on a broken wheel. Not a good combination."

"It's definitely cold," she admits. What she doesn't say is that this injury is nothing compared to others that she – or he – has had, and they both know it.

He chuckles. Then, unexpectedly, he says, "Come on." He holds out an arm, lifting up his own blanket as he does so.

"What?"

Body heat, Wash. I believe you're familiar with the concept."

"I am."

"Then get your ass over here and stop looking at me like I'm going to do something ungentlemanly."

"I…" she's more than vaguely aware of the flush that goes through her. One only he can cause. Considering that she's pretty much as far as you can get from a daft schoolgirl with a crush, it kind of drives her insane how easily he can render her speechless and disorientated.

"Come on," he says again, ignoring her discomfort. "The fire is closer to me than you. And two blankets – even with you kicking them off – are heavier than one."

He's right, of course. Perhaps the easy fix would be to just change positions with him, but there's something inside her that refuses to let her pass up this opportunity to be close to him. She decides to blame it on the pain.

And just how much she's truly missed him.

After getting shot and med evac'd from the battlefield, silence had reigned between the two of them. He'd been mourning the horrific murder of his wife by enemy forces, and she'd been focusing on her grueling recovery. There hadn't been a lot of time to reach out just to say hello.

Now, they have that time in abundance.

Slowly, achingly, she lifts herself up on her hands, sliding her body towards him. As she does so, her foot, which had been asleep and numb before, comes awake with a start. Quite involuntarily, she lets out a grunt of pain, and nearly crashes down. Only his heavily muscled arms keep her from a rather undignified face-first collapse into the dirt in front of the fire.

"I'll pretend I didn't see that," he cracks, his arms wrapped tightly around her.

"See what, sir?" she replies, smiling tightly against the surging pain.

He shakes his head in amusement, then pulls her closer to him, until she's practically leaning against his chest. From where her head is rested, she can hear his heartbeat, loud and powerful.

He adjusts the blankets over their legs, then rubs her arms with his large hands, as if trying to warm her up. The action is by itself chaste and yet somehow incredibly intimate. She feels a tingle go through her, one she's quick to assign to the pain she feels and not the…other stuff.

Stuff she knows better than to be feeling. There's no good outcome there. There never has been. So why go back to thinking about all of that now?

"I'm sorry you got hurt, Wash," he says suddenly. "But I'm not sorry about what happened today. It's allowed us some time to talk. And there's been something I've been meaning to say to you since you got here."

She looks up at him, confusion in her eyes. He's always been a leader who believes strongly in praising his troops, but this somehow feels like more.

"When I was putting my team together, they told me they would try to get me whoever I wanted. I gave them the names of about twenty folks, but you were the only one on my must have list. The only one."

"I…" she clamps her mouth shut, not knowing what to say, but desperately not wanting to make an ass of herself after a breathtaking revelation like that.

That doesn't stop him from continuing, though. It's almost like saying this is taking a massive weight off of him. "I'm glad you joined me here, Wash," he says softly. "Wouldn't have been right without you. Wouldn't have been home."

She thinks for a moment, trying to find the right words to let him know how much what he's saying means to her. And how very much it means to her to be here as well. With him. Finally, she settles for whispering, "I…I'm glad, too."

"Good," he says. "Now try to close your eyes and rest. I'll keep an eye out for us."

"Sir…"

"No arguments, Lieutenant." He punctuates this order by pulling her even closer to him. Close enough to feel the heat radiating off of him.

She turns towards the roaring fire, letting the brilliant orange flames (and the dangerous and all-too enticing comfort of his strong arms) lull her to sleep.

A few hours later, when the sun comes up, and Guzman arrives in a rover, the security officer is more than a little surprised to find his female counterpart sleeping soundly in Taylor's arms, her head rested against his chest, the Commander's chin atop her hair.

Body heat issues aside, what he's seeing looks far from platonic.

"Sir," Guzman says in order to announce himself as he steps into the clearing, his eyes not on Taylor and Wash, but rather on the blankets on the ground, especially the one lying at her feet, looking like it'd been kicked off.

Taylor, who Guzman is sure knew he was there from the moment he'd arrived, looks up and greets him with a smile. "Good to see you, Guz."

"You, too, sir. We were…concerned."

"Course," Taylor grins. He's long been accustomed to the worry he sparks in his subordinates. He knows he should try harder to concern them less, he just doesn't quite know how to do it.

"Do you need me to help you with Wash, sir?" he asks, his eyes now focusing on the lieutenant. Even with her boot still on, thanks to the odd bend of her foot, he can tell that she's injured.

"Nope, I got it. We'll be there in just a moment," Taylor responds, watching as Wash's eyes slowly begin to open. She's never been one to come to quickly, which means that her sense of self and place is still a few moments away for her.

"I'll be by the rover." He starts to turn, but is stopped by Taylor's voice.

"Not a word," Taylor warns, his blue eyes intense and dangerous. He knows how this looks, and while he doesn't much care, he knows Wash enough to know that the last she wants is everyone talking – and gossiping – about them.

"No, sir," Guzman promises.

And true to his word, he never mentions to anyone what he'd seen.

**TBC...**


	3. Chapter 3 Part 1

_**Author's Note: So my original plan of action here was to make this a clear-cut three parter - three interlocked stories spread out over three chapters, but this last story got away from me a bit so it's going to be cut into two chapters. So it's a three parter with 4 chapters. Eh, just go with it ;) Thanks for all the kind words. Oh, one last thing - I'm no doctor so if some of the medical stuff below is snort worthy, apologies in advance. Enjoy.**_

* * *

><p><em>2150. Terra Nova.<em>

The first red flag that goes up for Nathaniel Taylor does so when she rather surprisingly fails to show up for the daily pre-dawn patrol. Technically, because it's Sunday, and thus her day off, she's under absolutely no obligation to drag herself out of bed at oh-three-thirty-hours so that she can walk the perimeter of the security fence before the sun comes up.

That said, there hasn't been a day since she'd arrived in Terra Nova seven – almost eight now – years ago that she hasn't been there to do exactly that no matter how much she despises mornings (and good Lord does she).

It's kind of their thing. Each morning without fail, he meets her at the base of the steps to the main security cabin at almost exactly oh-four-hundred, and together, they walk the perimeter of the fence, ensuring that everything is as it should be.

So when she doesn't show up, he's more than a bit surprised. Even worried.

He's seriously considering dropping by her place to check on her when the radio on his left hip side suddenly crackles to life, and he hears the beautifully accented voice of Doctor Elizabeth Shannon come over it. "Commander Taylor," she says. "I need to see you immediately, sir."

It's just a notch before oh-five-hundred, and by her tone and the stress he hears in her voice, she's already had one hell of a day.

Which can't be good for anyone.

"I'm on my way," he grunts, deciding to forego questions for later. If there is some kind of emergency, wasting time asking for information that she'd prefer to supply in person will always slow things done.

"When you get here, don't come into the actual Infirmary. Go directly into my office. I'll speak to you over video conference in there."

He frowns at that, but replies, "Will do, Doc. Taylor out."

Once he's put the radio back in its' holster, he looks in the direction of Wash's house, his gaze holding on it for a long beat. She's probably just sleeping, he tells himself. Things have been wicked crazy lately. It's understandable if she'd chosen to sleep in, maybe get in a few extra hours. She certainly deserves it.

Still, he feels something in his gut. Something telling him that something isn't quite right with her. He resolves to check in on her as soon as he's done with Doctor Shannon. If Wash is just sleeping in, by then, she should be awake. And if that's all it is, he can rag her for her "laziness", and she'll just have to take it.

If that's all it is.

He shakes his head, clearing the distracting thoughts away. He needs to get his head back in the game, focus on whatever the reason is for Elizabeth Shannon asking him to come to the Infirmary so damned early in the morning.

When he enters the building, there are two things he notices immediately: first – it's already bustling with activity. It seems as many of the nurses and doctors in the colony has been called into work. Second – and perhaps most importantly – he sees a flashing sign on the door leading into where patients are examined. It says in large unavoidable block letters: UNDER QUARANTINE.

Taylor turns down a small hallway, and heads into the office of Doctor Shannon. The décor in here is simple and functional. Chances are she doesn't spend a lot of time in this room – certainly not enough to have the need to decorate it like one would a cubicle that they work in all day long.

Once inside the room, he crosses over to wall and hits a button that activates the view screen. Perhaps three seconds pass until it crackles to life showing him the very grim – and very tired face of Dr. Shannon. "Commander," she greets.

"What the hell is going on, Doc?" he asks, not bothering with a greeting of his own. Her complete lack of a flinch at his tone tells him that she doesn't mind.

"We have an outbreak," Elizabeth replies sharply, tension in her tone.

"What kind?"

"We're not completely sure yet, but what we do know is that absent a way to treat it, it's eventually fatal."

"Excuse me?"

"About two hours ago, Letty McCormick was brought in by her husband. He said that she'd woken up this morning coughing up blood and unable to control her muscles enough to stand up. Unfortunately, it goes downhill from there."

"Downhill?" Taylor asks, unable to mask the dread in his voice.

"The contamination appears to originate in the lungs, which is why extremely harsh coughing – which explains the blood - appears to be the first symptom. From there, we've seen different patterns of symptoms included but not limited to varying degrees of loss of motor control, extreme migraines, muscle spasms, seizures. The only symptom that has one hundred percent carried forth in every patient has been eventual cardiac arrest leading to –"

"Death."

"Yes, I'm afraid so."

Taylor allows a moment for her words to sweep over him, his jaw tensing. He doesn't know everyone in Terra Nova anymore (there are over a thousand citizens these days, and that number will only continue to grow), but he does feel each and every death deeply. As their leader, he takes it upon himself to ensure their safety, and when any member of the colony is lost, it always hits him hard.

Finally, "What makes you think we have an outbreak?"

"Her husband began coughing up blood about an hour ago. Since then, we've had five other people get brought in in various stages of the…whatever this is."

"Could it be some kind of poisoning?"

"No. We've already ruled that out. It appears to be some kind of pathogen. Most likely it was brought in from outside the colony. Whoever brought it back has probably infected everyone they've come in contact with since returning."

"And everyone who has been infected could have infected others?"

"Right. I suppose the one spot of good news is that we're pretty sure we know where the mass infection point was."

"Where?"

"The bar. Every one who has come in so far this morning was in it last night. Apparently there was a live music show. Those are the people we need to round up. We can't be sure what the incubation period is – or if it varies depending on the person - but what we do know is that those people who were infected last night are the ones who are most likely need help the most right now."

"All right. What can I do?"

"Find me Patient Zero," Elizabeth responds immediately. "There's a good chance that whoever it was has already died, but we need to find out what they were exposed to. I've already got Malcolm working on it with me, and we're running every test we know of to try to come up with a cure of our own, but it could very well be that the answers we need are in that man or woman's bloodstream."

"Understood."

"One more thing, Commander. Considering how the infection seems to start in the lungs, it's likely that it's airborne, which means that everyone currently here in the Infirmary was exposed the moment Mr. and Mrs. McCormick came in. As such, this building is on lockdown except for anyone who has already already been infected. We can't risk anyone else getting it until we know how to treat it."

What she doesn't say – doesn't need to say – is that with a fair amount of the medical team likely already sick, absent a cure, the colony could end up suffering catastrophic losses that it can ill afford.

He nods grimly. "I'm not losing half the colony like we did with the Sincyllic Fever, Doc. I'll find you Patient Zero."

"Good luck."

"Same to you, Doc." And with that, he turns and exits the room, walking quickly out of the Infirmary. He's not at all surprised to find Jim Shannon coming towards him, clearly already clued in on what's going on by the hurriedness of his gait.

"We need to quarantine the bar," Shannon says as he moves to walk in step with the Commander. "Make sure no one else goes into it until this is resolved."

"Agreed. We also need to find out who was OTG yesterday." Taylor pulls his radio out of his hip holster and speaks into it. "Rise and shine, Wash. I need you up. We've got a Code Red."

The second red flag of the morning flies up when he doesn't hear her immediate reply. Normally, no matter how deep of a sleep she's in, his voice – especially the tone he uses when he's giving an order - always brings her to, and groggy or not, she always answers within seconds. This time, he hears nothing but silence.

After exchanging a worried look with Jim, he speaks into the radio again, his voice even firmer now, "Lieutenant Washington? Reply."

"I can stop by her place," Jim offers after a long moment of silence, his brow creased. Every single one of his cop instincts is buzzing right about now, and he has a bad feeling about where this is going. "She's probably in the shower."

"No, I'll do it," Taylor says. "You get yourself into a bio-suit and get that damned bar shut down. I don't care who protests. Closed down."

"Yes, sir."

And, Shannon, get me those lists: I want to know who was in the bar last night and who was outside the gate. Within the hour."

"On it."

The two men take several steps away from each other, and then Taylor stops.

"Shannon."

"Sir?"

"Was your boy in the bar last night?" he asks, dread in his voice. Bad enough that Elizabeth Shannon is already infected.

"No. It was his night off. He was at home. All of my kids were."

"That's a relief at least."

Jim says nothing. Right now, as thankful as he is that none of his children are in the line of fire of this thing, his mind is on Elizabeth. Who is very much sitting in the crosshairs of this nasty outbreak.

Taylor seems to see the fear in his eyes. He steps towards Jim, and places a hand on each of his shoulders. "Your wife is brilliant," he says. "If anyone can find a cure for this, it's her. She'll make it through this."

It's hard – bordering on near impossible - not to be pulled along by Taylor's force of will, and so even though Jim is feeling all the fear in the word right now, he replies with a half-smile and a quick nod, then turns and heads towards the one of the extra supply stores – one that contains several extra ready-to-go bio suits.

Taylor in turn trots off towards Wash's residence, reaching it within minutes. He knocks on the door, pounding with his fist.

"Wash?"

When there's no reply, he touches the doorknob. He's not surprised to find it locked. She's a soldier after all, and thus extremely security conscious.

He knocks once more, and again, hears nothing but silence.

"Dammit," he growls. "We don't have time for this." He stands back, takes a breath, and then kicks out. The door immediately splinters and breaks under his hard contact. He enters. "Hey, Wash, I'm gonna owe you a new door."

Nothing.

His hand slips rises to his chest, removing the strap holding his gun down. "Wash?" he calls out again, listening for the sound of water. It's weird, but he's never wanted to walk in on her showering more than he does right now.

There's no water to hear, though.

Just…just the sound of coughing?

Oh, God no…

He charges through the living room, headed towards her bedroom. He shoves the door open, and is just about inside when he hears the nearly hoarse from dry coughing voice of his lieutenant whisper, "Stop. Please stop."

He looks up and sees her lying on the floor next to her bed, her back propped up against the wall. She's dressed in sweats and a blank tank, her sweat-dampened dark hair hanging in curtains down around her shoulders.

"Wash," he whispers, his eyes fixated on her unusually pale and waxy face.

"Don't come in here," she whispers. "Something's wrong."

He glances around the room, taking in the unusual disorder of it. It appears as though she'd come to suddenly in the night, and then tried to…get to her radio? He can't be sure about the exact sequence of events, but somehow or another, she'd ended up the floor next to her bed. He wonders how long she's been there.

"You're sick," he says, his words a statement and not a question.

"Yeah," she admits before coughing into her hand. The force of it rumbles deep in chest, sounding painful and thick. He sees her close her eyes tight as a violent shudder works its way through her body.

Quietly he asks, "Were you at the bar last night?"

She nods slowly. "Reynolds and some of the boys asked me to join them. Last time I let them talk me into something like that, huh?"

She's trying to joke this off, he supposes, but looking over at her shaking form, he finds that he's no mood to play along. Instead, he tells her, "You've been exposed to something," he tells her. "Some kind of pathogen."

"I kind of figured that." She lifts her trembling hand up, and shows him the red smears on it. "I'm coughing up blood," she whispers, her voice betraying fear.

"We need to get you to the Infirmary. They can help you." He's not sure that that's the truth, but suddenly, he's struck with the compulsive need to find a way to give her hope. He needs her to hold on. Fight. Not give in to this thing.

It's a sign of how scared Alicia Washington is that she doesn't even pretend to argue with him. "Okay. How?"

"I'll take you."

"No way. Not a chance. You're not coming anywhere near me, sir."

"Wash, I'm not leaving you."

"Yes, you are. Terra Nova needs you. Far more than it needs me."

"This isn't a debate."

"Nathaniel, please."

"You know me better than that. I trained you to know better. There's no way that I'm just leaving you here. That's not how we do things, Lieutenant."

She shakes her head in frustration. "This is idiotic."

"Maybe so. Now I'm coming in the room. And I'm going to help you get up and off the floor. And then we're walking over to the Infirmary. Can you do that?"

"What I should do is shoot you," she growls.

He chuckles. "Well that wouldn't really keep me from coughing up blood."

She's far from amused, but she knows him well enough to know when she's lost a battle. When Nathaniel Taylor sets his mind to something – especially when that something has to do with someone he cares about – nothing in the world will force him to alter his decided on course of action. No matter how damning to his own person that course of action might be.

He steps into the room, inhaling the smell of it. He's been in her house before, and knows her scents – typically very earthy and clean smells. Right now, though, this room smells coppery and stale. Like blood and death.

"Can you get up on your own?" he asks, coming towards her. He remembers what Elizabeth had said about one of the symptoms being loss of motor control.

"I think so," she says, though she's honestly not sure that she's not just being prideful. She'd woken up several times during the night, already caught in the feverish grip of this virus, infection, whatever the hell it was.

During that time, realizing that she'd come down with something fairly serious, she'd tried to get to her radio to contact a doctor. What she'd ended up doing was falling out of bed. Normally a slightly embarrassing incident. Right now, considering her inability to move most of her muscles, a rather terrifying one.

"You sure?" he queries, moving closer to her.

"No," she admits, but then slowly, using every ounce of energy she has left in her body, she pushes herself up the wall. She puts out a shaking hand to stop him from helping her – to stop him from touching her and getting further exposed – but she needn't have bothered. The moment she staggers from the wall, and nearly collapses atop her jellied and suddenly useless legs, he's there to grab her, holding her arms, and pulling her towards him.

"Easy," he says. "I've got you."

"Nathaniel," she whispers. "Please, don't do this." She can feel him slide his hand into hers, touching the infected blood still smeared there. It's enough to make her want to scream in frustration and fear. She lacks the energy for either.

He acts like he doesn't hear her. "Hold on to me," he tells her as he leads her very slowly from her room. He leads her to the couch in the front and lays her on it, then lifts up his radio. "Shannon, I'm with Wash. She's sick."

"Yeah," Jim answers, his voice crackling over the radio. He sounds slightly muffled, like he's speaking through the filter of a bio suit. "So I'm hearing. I have a pretty good list from the bar to go on."

"I believe Private Reynolds is on that list," Taylor tells him, remembering the relationship between the young soldier and Jim's oldest daughter.

"He is. I'm on my way to him now."

"Fine, but you make for damn sure that your bio suit stays on."

"Understood. What's your plan?"

"Immediately? I need to get her to the Infirmary. She needs help."

"I assume you've been exposed?" Jim asks. Where as he'd suited up before going to the bar, he's acutely aware that Taylor had entered Wash's residence – probably stupidly so – sans any kind of filter or breathing mask.

"Most likely," Taylor sighs. "Which means it's up to you to find Patient Zero and get him or her to your wife so she can find a cure."

"Right. Take care of Wash."

"Don't you worry about that, Shannon; I will."

"Not dead yet, boys," Wash mutters, managing a little force behind her words. It's not enough, though. Far from it, really.

"Better not die at all, Lieutenant," Jim says. "I still owe you a drink from that bet I lost last month."

"Yes, you do," she agrees, her head lolling back to settle on the couch cushions.

"Bet?" Taylor asks, eyebrow lifting.

She shrugs, a sleepy smile forming on her face. "On one of our recons, he bet me I couldn't hit an obscured target from one hundred yards away."

"You nailed it, Wash," Jim says softly.

"And don't you forget that," she answers between two harsh dry coughs.

"I won't. See you both in a few hours. Shannon out." There's a soft beep, and then the comm link goes dead.

"He thinks I'm going to die," she announces, lifting her head up off the cushion with what appears to be great effort.

"He doesn't know you as well as I do, Wash," Taylor tells her. "I know you're too damned stubborn to die. If a couple knife wounds and three bullets to the chest couldn't take you out, this sure as hell ain't going to."

She smiles at him, then says softly, urgently, "You have to let me to try to walk to the Infirmary under my own strength," she says. "I don't want the men to see me like this. Please?"

"Okay," he nods. He's aware that by now, everyone around knows about the outbreak. He also knows that the respect her men have for her is so strong that it would take a whole lot more than her being unable to walk for them to lose their faith in her. He gets pride, though. Understands it well. And he knows this woman and her need to always be strong. Especially around him.

So reluctantly, all the while fearing that she lacks the strength to actually be able to walk five steps much less a couple hundred yards, he lets her have it.

He slides an arm around her waist, tightening it to allow her to put more weight on him. He feels her own arm loop around his back. Then, slowly, he helps her exit her house, walking with her down the road to the Infirmary. With much of the medical staff already quarantined, there's no one to come out and get her so they'll have to make the entire journey there themselves.

It takes them almost fifteen minutes, but finally, they arrive at the door. It's then, when he notices how weak and exhausted she is, that he says to hell with pride, and leans over and picks her up, cradling her in his arms.

She whispers his name, but gives no other argument. He feels her fingers gripping at his shirt, as if hanging on for dear life.

Those two facts alone scare the shit out of him.

"Doctor Shannon!" he calls out as he bursts into the Infirmary. He's speaking into his radio, practically shouting. He walks up to the door with the quarantined sign.

Elizabeth comes to the glass door of the Infirmary, her eyes widening as she sees him. "Commander, what the hell are you - oh, God. Has the lieutenant been…is she sick?"

"Yes. Help her."

"You realize that by coming in direct contact with her that you've most likely been infected as well?" Elizabeth asks as she pushes buttons on her side, allowing the glass door to slide open, and permit him entrance.

"I don't care. Tell me where to lay her down, and then tell me what to do."

"Over there." She points to one of the bio-beds on the far side of the room. She watches as the Commander carries his lieutenant to the cushioned slab and gently lays her down on it, taking a moment to lean over, and brush sweat-soaked hair away from her bleary unfocused eyes.

"We're here, Wash," he tells her. "We're in good hands now. Everything is going to be just fine, you hear me?"

"Yes, sir," she whispers, her eyes closed tight against the lights of the room. They're not terribly bright, but even a little illumination seems to be too much.

"Lieutenant Washington, it's Elizabeth," Dr. Shannon says as she approaches. "I know you're in pain. I'm going to give you something to help."

"No," Wash replies immediately. "If you can't stop this, I don't…I need to be me, okay? I don't want to not see it coming."

"Sir," Elizabeth says, looking right at Taylor. "As I explained already, the stages of this contagion as it spreads are pretty severe. It would certainly help –"

"No drugs, Doc. No painkillers, no sedatives. Nothing."

"May I presume you feel the same way?"

"I do."

"All right. Well at least sit down and try to relax a bit. We've made some progress, but we're still not sure about the incubation period. It could be minutes or hours. If we're lucky, we'll find a cure quickly, and you'll never feel anything at all."

"And if I'm not?"

She glances behind her to where a nurse is pulling a sheet up off a body.

"Right," he says. "Then it seems like we have work to do. If I'm trapped inside here with you, I need something to do." He holds up his hands. "I'm yours, Doc."

"You know how to take and run blood samples?"

"I do."

"We need a fresh sample from everyone in this room so that we can chart the progress of the contagion from when people were brought in and hour to hour."

"Just point me in the right direction."

**TBC...**


	4. Chapter 3 Part 2

_**Author's Note: Well, so much for the idea of this part of the overall story being a two-parter. It's not yet ready to be finished. Maybe one more chapter after this. Maybe two. We shall see. I had considered briefly splitting this piece off into it's own story, but it still fits the overall theme, and thus it stays. Apologies for allowing my muse to run around unsupervised. He tends to get into trouble at times. I do hope, however, that you continue to enjoy this piece. Thanks for the kind words thus far - they mean the world to any writer, and to me especially.**_

_**As with last time, I am not a doctor. I've done some very basic research, but if any medical issues presented herein make you giggle with derision, I do apologize. Go with it, yeah?**_

* * *

><p>Turns out that had Nathaniel Taylor chosen to be a medical assistant instead of a military man, he might have ended up with a very successful career indeed. Over the next hour and a half, as more and more patients are brought in – including Private Reynolds, much to Elizabeth's chagrin – the Commander quietly and quite efficiently acts as her right hand man.<p>

Neither one of them mentions the oddness of him taking orders from her – it hardly seems relevant with so many lives at stake. Privately, she finds that she's even more impressed with this man than she had been before. It's not easy for someone who ordinarily is charged with making decisions to be the one following directives instead. That he takes to it so easily speaks volumes to her about his dedication to both the Colony and to his people.

Especially Lieutenant Washington.

As of yet, the lieutenant's condition hasn't degraded. That's a great sign for her, but also a troubling one in the grand scheme of things. While she and Malcolm have made significant headway – they believe – on figuring out what the pathogen is, they've still having a considerable amount of trouble effectively charting the progression of it.

For instance, Private Alex Dorsey had not been at the bar the previous evening. In fact, his infection point appears to have been the dawn patrol, which had also been staffed by a few soldiers who had been at the bar and not yet become asymptotic. Dorsey had come into the Infirmary less than two hours after likely encountering the pathogen. He'd gone through the full gamut of symptoms before finally succumbing to a massive heart attack, which had killed him.

All in, Dorsey had likely been sick for about four hours total.

Wash and Reynolds appear to be complete opposites. While Wash has exhibited the coughing up of blood, the muscle fatigue and loss of motor control, she's been pretty much static there for several hours. Reynolds, who had been with Wash and other soldiers at the bar the previous evening, has only shown the earliest signs of illness – harsh dry coughing with some spotting.

It's utterly perplexing. Dorsey was healthy, in much the same shape as Reynolds. They'd been around the same age, and both of them had been completely free of major childhood illnesses that could have helped along the pathogen. And yet.

"Doc?" Taylor rumbles from beside her. She startles slightly. A few moments earlier, he'd been over by Wash, checking in on her. He's been doing that just about every ten minutes. Making sure she's still conscious, still fighting.

"Commander," Elizabeth chuckles uneasily. When she looks up at him, she's met with a soft understanding smile that calms her. "How is the lieutenant?"

"She's exhausted."

"I can imagine. But the important thing is –"

"That she's hanging in. Trust me, Doc, I know." He tilts his head and looks at her.

"What?"

"How are you holding up?"

Elizabeth shrugs her shoulders. There are so many things that she could say here, but quite a few of them are tinged with equal amounts of frustration and anger. This man expects better from the people who work for him. "It's been a long day, Commander. And it won't be over until we find a way to stop this contamination from spreading. As we saw with Private Dorsey, the chances are very good that it has already reached its way around the whole camp."

"I know," Taylor replies grimly, his turbulent blue eyes glancing over towards the glass door sealing him into the Infirmary. He'd love to be out there on the outside helping Jim Shannon run down leads on whom Patient Zero might be.

"Even so," she inserts, knowing exactly what he's thinking. "We can't take the risk of sending someone out who we know is infected."

"I know. Okay, what else can I do?"

"For right now? Honestly not much. We'll do another blood run in about forty minutes. Until then, do what you do best, Commander. Be there for your people. They need your strength right now. We all do."

* * *

><p>After doing a round of the room, and speaking to every patient that's still conscious, Taylor seats himself down next to Wash again. He does a quick visual check of her, taking in her waxy complexion, the thin layer of sweat coating her, and her clenched jaw. She's clearly in pain, but still refusing any kind of relief.<p>

He reminds himself – certainly not for the first or last time – that she hasn't progressed since having been brought into the Infirmary a few hours earlier. That means she still has more time before the illness becomes truly hideously serious.

"Nathaniel," she whispers, her voice raspy and just barely audible.

"I'm here, Wash."

"I'm okay, sir," she tells him, rolling slightly to look at him. The effort is excruciating for her – every muscle she moves screeches in agony – but she succeeds, managing to lock eyes with him. "I'm still here, too."

"I need you to keep telling me that," he admits, reaching out to take her hand. He's held it a couple of other times, but not like this. This feels like he's holding onto her and begging her to do the same. This tells her that he's scared.

She kind of hates that even if it does accurately reflect her own feelings.

"Not going anywhere, sir. Someone has to cover your six."

He chuckles. "That they do, Lieutenant. I'd probably be dead a hundred times over without you back there."

"Try a thousand."

"You might be stretching it a bit there."

"Towards the low end," she lobs back. That she is still bantering with him gives him tremendous hope.

"Fine, you win," he tells her.

"Like always," she tells him with what might have been a sassy smile had not a tremor worked its way through her frame at that exact moment. She coughs harshly after it passes, her body suddenly bent forward and nearly seeming to shake apart with the effort of each hack.

That's when he notices the change in the way she's coughing.

He turns, finds Elizabeth (who is bent over Reynolds, talking to him) and calls out, "Doc, I need you over here."

Elizabeth looks up at him with sharp alarm in her eyes. She's clearing fearing the worst. As she approaches, her eyes sweep over Wash's doubled over form. She settles a gentle hand on the lieutenant's back. "What's wrong?" she asks.

"The sound of the coughing. Dry before. Sounds…wet now."

She meets Wash's eyes as he says this. Having been a medic for almost all of her time in Somalia, the lieutenant understands what "wet-sounding" coughs mean. Liquid in the lungs or more precisely acute respiratory distress. It seems that finally, after a brief pause in the action, the infection is progressing again.

Elizabeth taps a few keys on the monitors. The sirens hadn't gotten off because Wash's vital signs hadn't declined noticeably, but what she's seeing is absolutely concerning. "Damn," she curses in spite of her best efforts not to.

"It's moving again isn't it?" Wash sighs once she's finally able to lay herself back again. Her chest aches from the exertion of the coughs. She supposes she should be thrilled that she'd been able to force her body forward, but right now, that seems like far too little of a victory to celebrate considering.

"It appears so. I'm sorry."

"Nothing to be sorry about," Wash tells her.

Elizabeth just smiles tightly at that. She's heard these words before – knows that Wash has as well. It's what patients tell their doctors around the time they start to think maybe they're not going to make it out of this alive. It's a horrible thought.

"We need to put you on assisted breathing immediately, " Elizabeth tells her, trying to steer the conversation back towards possible treatments. She's dumbing down the terminology, not for Wash but for Taylor, who is suddenly looking very agitated. This man is so used to controlling his feelings and emotions, but he's never really been good about doing that in regards to the people he cares deeply for. Wash is certainly – absolutely - one of those people.

Perhaps, one could argue with some degree of ease, that she is the most important person left to him in this life. His most loyal soldier, his most trusted lieutenant, and most importantly, his oldest and dearest friend.

If she dies today, outwardly, Nathaniel Taylor will most likely do what he has always done – he will stoically push through the pain and hurt and do what's best for the Colony. Inwardly, well Elizabeth can only begin to guess how such a loss will affect him. She's aware of his personal history - mostly through personnel files and interview texts – and knows that he's already lost so much in his life.

Wash nods slowly. She'd love to have the energy to argue, to insist that she doesn't need the oxygen, but she knows her own body well enough to know that what she's feeling right now is very serious. If she's to have any chance at all to survive, then she has to cooperate as much as possible in order to slow this thing down again. It's all about buying just a bit more time really.

Time to find a cure or time to say goodbye.

She feels a soft mask get placed over her mouth and nose. It reminds her of the damned rebreathers that she'd left behind eight long years ago. Almost immediately the mask, which is made up of some weird kind of gel that expertly molds itself to the wearers' face, seals down. She feels the rush of air into her.

As the pure oxygen flows into her, and she feels some sharpness return to her fogged mind, it occurs to her that Nathaniel hasn't spoken for several minutes. Not since Elizabeth had come rushing over. One look up at her commanding officer tells her everything she needs to know, though – right now, he's more scared than he's been since arriving in Terra Nova. For him, facing down Nykos and Slashers and Carnos and even Sixers is nothing compared to sitting at the bedside of a loved one and waiting for them to die.

Even worse when it's someone like her who if they must go should at least be afforded the respect and dignity of dying on her feet.

He's been here before. He'd watched Ayani die so many years ago. And just days before that, he'd watched Wash get med evac'd away from the battlefield. This is hell for him. No, it's a repeat of hell. Right now, he's wondering how much more of this he can take.

Deep in the middle of his thoughts, he's surprised when he feels a slightly calloused hand slide into his own, and then grip it with more strength than he would have assumed possible. He looks up, and smiles slightly when he sees his lieutenant watching him with what he can only describe as annoyance.

"Sorry," he says.

Unable to speak through the mask, she simply squeezes his hand again.

* * *

><p>Reluctantly, a short while later, Nathaniel leaves her side to do another round of blood tests for Elizabeth, who has been called away to assist with a patient who seems to be getting very close to the end. All around him, he can hear the sounds of illness and pain. He wonders when that will be him.<p>

He gathers blood from each patient, offering a comforting word to each – or in the case of Corporal Penny, a promise to tell his child how good of a man he was – then runs it through the analyzing machine. He does this task with considerable detachment, the gears in his mind grinding away, searching for a military solution to this problem. That he can do nothing but wait around seems preposterous to him. Unthinkable even. There has to be more that he can do. Has to be.

There isn't, of course. Deep down, even he knows that.

Right now, everyone is waiting on exactly one thing – for Jim Shannon to find out who Patient Zero is and bring him in. Dead or alive.

Shannon has been in touch all throughout the day, radioing in almost every fifteen to thirty minutes without fail. He's clearly worried about his wife, who thankfully hasn't shown any symptoms yet. Each time he initiates contact, he also asks about Wash and Reynolds.

The younger man because his daughter loves him. Wash because Shannon considers her a good friend. The two of them routinely patrol together, handle Colony security problems side-by-side or sometimes just go out drinking with each other. In a way, Taylor almost envies the ease of their relationship. There are no lines to worry about, no protocols or regulations to consider. They can just be perfectly at ease with each other without worrying what others might think.

"Commander," he hears from his side. It occurs to him that this isn't the first time today that he's allowed his thoughts to drift him away from reality. He wonders if that's a little known symptom of the infection. It's been hours since he'd been exposed, and so far, he hasn't shown even so much as a cough. Perhaps the earliest stages are more neurological than physical, he muses.

"Mr. Hawkins?" he asks, glancing in the direction of the bio-bed that she'd been standing at just a few minutes earlier.

"I'm afraid he's passed."

Taylor just shakes his head.

"Commander, how are you feeling?"

"As well as can be expected," he replies, moderately amused that she seems to be thinking about the same thing he is – that he seems just fine.

"So I've noticed. Odd."

"Why's that? You're not showing any symptoms, either."

She simply smiles at him, and he thinks maybe it's a slightly sad one. She then pulls her left hand out of her pocket, and shows it to him. That's when he notices that it's trembling fiercely. "I can't control it," she tells him. "Started about twenty minutes ago. And I've been feeling the muscle fatigue for a bit over an hour now. Seems not everyone starts with the coughing after all."

"You should lie down."

"We both know there isn't time for that, sir," she answers. "I've already lost three members from my medical team. We can't bring in reinforcements. Whoever is in here, it falls to us – and to Malcolm – to find a way to treat this."

"No rest for the wicked."

"I prefer not to think of myself as wicked," she says at him, a smile lighting up her face. He can see the seriousness of what's going on around them burning deep in her eyes, but he appreciates her attempts at levity more than she knows. Much like Wash, it means that she hasn't given up yet. She's still fighting.

"So noted, Doc. As for myself, aside from maybe having a bit of a straying mind today, I feel just fine." He tilts his head. "Could that be a symptom?"

"It's possible certainly, but to be honest, unlikely. It's far more plausible, Commander, that believe it or not, you're simply human like the rest of us, and are therefore allowing your fears to get the best of you. If only for a few moments at a time."

He grunts at that, choosing not to tell her that in his line of work, even a few seconds of allowing such thoughts can end up deadly for everyone involved.

"When's the last time we took a blood sample from you?" Elizabeth queries, choosing to move past the awkwardness of the prior conversation.

"Not since I came in."

"Let's take another now."

"You having an idea?"

"Not sure yet. Right now I'm just mostly curious."

"All right," Taylor nods before sitting down and holding out his arm to her.

* * *

><p>The next time Shannon contacts them is about twenty minutes after Elizabeth has disappeared into the lab with several blood samples – including Taylor's. This time, the lone sheriff in Terra Nova has some well-needed good news.<p>

"I think I've found Patient Zero," Jim says, his voice still heavily filtered by the speaker of the bio-suit. He sounds tired, which he probably is. Not only has he been trudging around in a super heavy, super hot bio-suit since just after the sun had come up, but he's also been moving non stop. And he's probably more than a little freaked out by everything he's been seeing.

"Who is it?" Taylor asks as he gets up (after providing the blood, he'd returned to his position next to Wash, who has been staring blearily up at the ceiling, her eyes half-closed but still broadcasting clear fear and pain) and makes his way towards the lab. "Wait, hang on a sec."

As he approaches, he sees Elizabeth bent over a table, speaking to Malcolm via videoconference. All around her are screen and holo-projectors full of the breakdown of various blood samples. Taylor knocks on the door and enters, showing Elizabeth the radio to explain his entrance.

"I'm in with your wife and Malcom, Shannon. Go ahead."

"I was telling the Commander that I believe I've located Patient Zero. His name is Trevor Hannahan. He's on your team, Malcolm."

Malcolm nods. "He's one of my field researchers. He went out to take samples of some of the new vegetation that we found over in the West Valley. But I already checked every sample he brought back, they were clean of all pathogens."

"Don't know what to tell you," Jim answers. "Of the six potential matches – folks having been OTG yesterday and at the bar last night – Hannahan is the only one I've found that looks like he's been dead since early this morning. And people I've talked to seem to remember that he was coughing up a storm last night."

"We need to get his remains here immediately," Elizabeth states. "As well as the clothes he was wearing yesterday. And his backpack if it's around."

"Already in progress," Jim replies grimly. " How are our people doing?"

Taylor exchanges a look with Elizabeth, as if asking her if she's going to tell him the truth about her symptoms. Instead, she, she shakes her head and answers with, "Mark appears to still be steady. The lieutenant…not as much."

"How bad is she?"

"Right now, she's holding steady again, but she is starting to show some of the more dangerous symptoms."

"Damn." Then, after a beat, he asks, "And how are you?"

"We're fine, Jim. Both the Commander and I remain symptom free."

There's a sound like a sharp exhaling of air. "Thank God. All right, I should have Hannahan to you in about ten minutes. And don't worry, Commander, we'll make sure his body is treated with the proper respect."

"Didn't assume otherwise," Taylor assures him. "We'll see you in a bit."

"Yes, sir. Shannon out." The radio beeps and then goes dead.

"All right, what am I missing?" Malcolm asks immediately. "And don't say nothing, I saw the looks you two gave each other. Are either of you showing symptoms?"

Elizabeth and Taylor exchange another look – his plainly stating (ironically) that now is no time for stubbornness. Hers almost insisting upon it. Finally, sounding utterly annoyed, she admits, "I am. But they're mild. And beginning stage. I'm still fully able to function."

Malcolm runs a hand across his jaw, his fingers rubbing against his facial hair. "And if that changes?"

"We'll worry about that later. I'm going to go get ready to receive the body. Can you finish examining the blood samples?"

"Of course," Malcolm nods, looking like there's a lot more that he'd like to say.

"Good. I'll contact you as soon as we have Hannahan's body on an autopsy table." She then leans forward and turns the screen off.

"You should have told him," Taylor says softly, clearly speaking about Jim.

"I know. And if I have to, I will. But I truly believe that the answer we need is in Mr. Hannahan's body. If that's true, and we can find a cure quickly, then there's no reason to worry him. Not right now when the Colony needs him."

She's staring straight at him, practically daring him to call her on what she's saying which is only a few shades off of what he's said at other times. Nothing is more important than the Colony, right? Problem is, just a few hours ago, he'd said to hell with that responsibility and willingly risked infection to go to Wash.

"He's already worried, Doc. We worry about the people we love." She sees him turn his head – whether he realizes it or not – glancing towards Wash. "We might not want to, we may know it's best not to, but we do. We just do."

She reaches out and lightly touches his left forearm causing him to look back at her, "I know," she tells him. "Believe me, I do. But right now, neither one of us has the time to worry about what we can't control. We need to focus on what we can do. Jim has a job to do and so do I."

He's just about to ask her again what he's supposed to do – practically beg her for something to do that will actually help – when a loud siren goes off from across the room. They both snap around, searching out the original.

"Wash," he says, his voice suddenly sounding quite strangled. Even from across the room, he can see the way her body is jumping, caught in the grip of a massive seizure. The two of them cross the room in mere seconds. As they do so, they pass several soldiers – including Reynolds – who stand up to try to see what's going on. They know full well who is lying on that bed, and to a man, they feel the heartache of what their lieutenant is going through.

"Turn her to the left," Elizabeth snaps out as her fingers race over the control panel of the bio-bed, quickly calling up different diagnostic displays. "Gently, don't try to restrain her. We need to let it ride out."

Taylor nods his quick understanding of the direction, his hands reaching out to grip her shoulders and turn her towards the left. It's not easy – she's strong normally, somehow even stronger now. "Easy, Wash, come on now, easy," he pleads, knowing damn well that it's unlikely that she's cognizant enough to know what he's saying. Still, he feels like he needs to comfort her somehow.

After a few more seconds (which feel like a brutal eternity to him), the seizure finally come to a sputtering end and then, utterly exhausted, Wash collapses into his arms, her body feeling practically boneless. He takes note of the way her eyes are rolled back, and the way her chest is heaving with almost violent exertion. He sees the sweat practically pouring down and across her ashy skin. Worst of all, she's still slightly shaking, as if she's suffering through a string of tiny aftershocks. Most likely, her body is simply coming down, regulating itself. She's conscious, but only in the most scientific and literal sense of the word.

"We're running out of time," Taylor growls, his hands still gripping her shoulders, perhaps a bit too hard. Looking down, he sees the tension in his own knuckles, and realizes that it's likely that he'll have left bruises on her skin.

Elizabeth doesn't reply to that, doesn't need to. He sees the look in her eyes, knows that she's thinking the exact same thing. He sees her run a hand – the one that has been shaking badly – through her hair. That's when he notices the beads of sweat forming around her temples. He's about to say something to her about what he's saying when he catches the form of a young medical aide coming towards them, moving quickly.

"Doctor, your husband is outside. He said you're expecting him," the young man states as he approaches. His name is Max Harvey. Vaguely, Taylor remembers him having come over in the 5th Pilgrimage, then only sixteen years old. He notices that the kid seems to be mostly all right, showing only minor symptoms.

"I am," she nods. Then, to Taylor, ""I'll go out to meet Jim." When he looks like he's about to protest, she states, much more firmly. "You want something to do, this is it. Lieutenant Washington means a lot to this Colony, sir. A lot to you. Right now, she needs you far more than I do. And you can help her far more than you can help me. Now, sir, with all due respect, let me do what I need to do, and you do what you need to."

"Copy that, Doc."

Elizabeth nods sharply, then turns to Harvey. Once again, acutely aware that the Commander is hanging on every word she says, she dummies down the medical terminology for his benefit, "The lieutenant just a suffered a grand mal seizure. She's conscious, but still not cognizant of who or where she is. She should start coming back to her senses within a few minutes. If you will please monitor her condition, Mr. Harvey? If you see anything out of spec, let me know immediately."

"Yes, ma'am," Harvey nods and then moves over to take her place at the console next to Wash's bio-bed. He starts checking her oxygen levels and her blood pressure. Everything he can check, he does.

For his part, Taylor has stopped paying attention to both Harvey and Taylor, his eyes now back on Wash, who true to Elizabeth's words, is starting to show signs of awareness. He sees her start to move, her motions uncharacteristically awkward and graceless. She looks a bit like a small child trying to figure out what the hell her limbs are supposed to do.

Then he sees her look up at him, her dark eyes hazy and unfocused, but still clearly frightened. She probably has no idea what's just happened (he recalls from his rudimentary field medical training that seizure victims rarely realize what has just occurred to them), but she seems to know that something is very wrong with her. She seems to understand that somehow or another, she has taken a significant turn for the worse.

And then she reaches up, pulls the gel oxygen mask away from her mouth with her left hand, and whispers, "Nathaniel."

"I'm here, Wash. I'm right here." He moves his hands from her shoulders and clasps them both around her right one, squeezing tight.

"There's something…something I need…I need you to know." she gasps out, her words choked. He has to strain to hear her. Almost unbelievably, he thinks he sees tears shining in her eyes.

"Sir," Harvey says, "We need her to put that mask back on." He's looking down at the screen, frowning as he sees the effects of the loss of pure oxygen on her.

"You heard the man, Wash. Put the mask back on," Taylor insists.

"Nathaniel, please."

He wants to tell her that whatever she has to say can wait. He wants to tell her that there will be time for this later, but as he looks into her hazy dark eyes, and he takes in her complexion (which suddenly seems a bit bluish to him) he realizes that there might not be another chance for this.

"Commander," Harvey starts again.

"Son, is she stabilized?" Taylor asks.

"I'm fine," Wash whispers. Not shockingly, everyone ignores her.

"Mr. Harvey?" Taylor presses.

"Yes, sir, Lieutenant Washington is stabilized."

"Then let them have a moment," Reynolds says as he comes up. He's starting to look a bit pale himself, but considering how many hours ago he was exposed (while at the bar with Wash and a few other men), he's holding up well. When he looks down at the lieutenant, though, his face contorts into an expression of worry and fear. This woman has not only been his CO, but also like a sister to him. She'd taken a liking to him from the beginning, pushing him hard and fast, looking for ways to make him stronger. A better man.

Watching her go through this – even as he knows that this could be him in just a few short hours (or even minutes) – utterly wrecks the young Private.

Maybe Harvey realizes that this is a battle he doesn't want to have or maybe he sees something in both Taylor and Reynolds's eyes that convinces him that arguing with either man right now is in no one's best interest. Either way, after one glance down at Wash (who he's amazed to notice seems to be actually following the discussion with astonishing awareness considering what she's just gone through) he replies with, "Right. Doctor Shannon could probably use some assistance getting the body into Autopsy."

"I'm sure she would appreciate the help," Taylor agrees, the rather unsettling memory of her shaking hands abruptly popping into his head.

Suddenly eager to be aware from these two men who suddenly seem intense, Harvey states, "Yes, sir. " He checks the screen once more, verifies Wash's vitals, memorizes the numbers he sees (Elizabeth will surely want to know them) then moves away, off towards where good doctor had disappeared to.

"Thank you, Private." Taylor says to Reynolds as soon as Harvey is gone.

"Not a problem, sir. If the lieutenant needs anything, I'm right over there." He gestures back towards the bed he'd been sitting on just a few minutes prior.

"Understand."

Reynolds nods, and then almost reluctantly, moves off.

As soon as he's gone, Taylor turns his attention fully to his lieutenant. He squeezes her hand again, and says softly, so only she can hear, "All right, Wash, it's just you and me now. Talk to me."

**TBC…**


	5. Chapter 3 Part 3

A/N: Thanks once again for the amazingly kind words. As said previously, this one pretty much got away from me. It's kind of become a Wash/Taylor and Jim/Elizabeth piece, but hey, I still think it's a pretty neat tale overall and it progresses them. Once more, I'm not a doctor and I'm certainly no science guru so apologies for the snort worthy stuff. Hopefully the drama makes up for it. Enjoy and let me know if you still are.

* * *

><p>This shouldn't be so damned hard, Lieutenant Alicia Washington thinks to herself as she stares up and into the deeply worried face of her oldest friend. She's known this man since she was barely more than a teenager. He's gone from being the mysterious war hero that she'd read about through dispatches while working at the clinic to being the maddeningly maverick CO who she'd follow into hell to being a dear comrade who she'd walked through time to stand beside.<p>

After all of that, after all they've been through together – war and pain, loss and hurt, recovery and redemption – this moment, well it should be easy.

Especially considering this might be one of their last moments together at all.

She's not a woman prone to fits of melodramatic hysteria. She doesn't typically think in such morbidly fatalistic terms. No, quite to the contrary, really. She considers herself a pragmatic realist instead. She's lived much of her life – all of her adult life really – believing in the simple philosophy that when it's her time to go (Into the light? Into nothing? That part she's not too clear about), well then, that's okay. And that'll be that.

Yeah, when it's really time to move on, she's always believed that there would be no protests about how it should have been. No tears shed over what might have been. She's always figured that she'd know enough to know when it'd be time to lay down her arms and accept destiny and fate and just let go.

At least that's what she's always believed.

Right now, though, looking like she's mere minutes away from cashing in her chips (and feeling like it, too) she's suddenly sure of only one thing – she doesn't want to go out like this. Please, God, not like this.

She's not ready to stop fighting.

Problem is, she might not have a choice in the matter.

Just about every part of her body hurts. And what doesn't vibrate with a kind of raw almost unimaginable agony, aches or burns like she's been lit on fire from deep within herself. She's ridiculously tired, fatigued almost beyond description.

And for a woman who had once survived five days of the sleep deprivation techniques of trained torturers in Mogadishu, that's saying something indeed.

"Wash," she hears him say, his voice soft and throaty. It reminds her that she'd told him that she has something to say to him, something she's needed to say to him for a very long time. Now, her dark bloodshot eyes locked on his storm blue eyes, she wonders if she has the courage to tell him everything she's been holding inside of her for so long. So very long.

She swallows hard, her throat dry and painful. She feels her chest tremble as she inhales air greedily, trying to pull oxygen into her damaged lungs. She should still be breathing in air from the mask, but if she does that, she won't be able to talk to him. And she needs to. Time is too short not to say these things to him.

"Nathaniel," she whispers, her voice even lower now. It's becoming a significant struggle to speak even a little bit, and the sensible part of her thinks it stupid to be wasting such precious energy on deathbed declarations. After all, the goal is to survive, right? Not to go out early because she couldn't control the emotions running through her like an out of control forest fire.

"Go ahead," he urges, his face now so close to her that she can practically feel the brush of his beard against her feverish skin of her cheek.

She opens her mouth to speak again, is about to let everything she's feeling, everything she's been feeling for over a decade, come rolling out.

And then everything goes dark and hazy on her again.

* * *

><p>He bends down towards her, wanting to feel the warmth coming off of her sweat soaked skin, even if the fever ravaging her is mostly responsible for it. Heat means she's still alive. Heat can be battled and defeated. Controlled and conquered. It's cold that's the enemy. Once you're cold, that's when it's all over. Nothing more to do besides pull the sheet over once the warmth stops.<p>

"Go ahead," he presses. He grasps her hand with his, squeezing it harder than is probably comfortable for her. She doesn't protest, though, just looks up at him.

Then she opens her mouth to speak. He feels his heart seize in anticipation, curiosity and fear becoming almost overwhelming. He wonders if she's about to say something to him that he has no idea how to deal with. He wonders if she's about to tell him that she has regrets.

And then, just as she's about to voice whatever she's been thinking about – whatever she needs to say – her body suddenly shakes, the force of a brutal tremor just about shaking her off of the bio-bed.

Seconds later, she begins to violently seize again, her eyes rolling backwards.

* * *

><p>It's hell to touch his wife through the thick rubber gloves of a bio-suit. He can't feel her skin, and yet Jim Shannon tries anyway, his palm cupping her cheek.<p>

"You're sick," he says. There are tears in his eyes, the glint of them reflecting against the glass visor of the bio-suit. They're standing in the garage of the Infirmary, next to two rovers used for medical emergencies. His own rover – well, Malcolm's – is next to him, a black body bag in the back of it.

"I'm all right," she insists, but this man knows her too well. They've been together for almost twenty years, there's very little he can't read in her even most stoic of expressions. And right now, she's not doing a very good job of hiding her emotions at all. That alone tells him how serious everything is.

"Liz," he whispers. "Please tell me this isn't happening."

"I wish I could," she admits, her voice quivering just a bit. "But this is bad, Jim. Really bad. We're losing someone almost every twenty minutes now. And they're not going easy. They're going painfully. Even the ones we've been able to bring back from the brink, they just…they go eventually. We can't stop it."

He can see it in her wide sleep deprived eyes; she's losing her cool quickly, her emotions bleeding out as the stress of the last several hours (not to mention the contagion) hits her hard. She's a highly experienced trauma surgeon who has worked in the worst hospitals in the (old) world, and yet somehow watching this nightmare unfold around her makes her want to fall to her knees and curse whatever deity there might be. Assuming there is one, of course.

"Well maybe this guy will help," Jim suggests, pointing towards the Rover. There's a desperation to his tone, a frantic need to make his wife believe that this isn't over yet, that maybe there's still a Hail Mary pass yet to be thrown.

"He'd better," Elizabeth answers. "Because we are running out of time quickly. "

"Wash?" Jim asks, his tone heavy with worry for his friend and colleague.

She nods. "Lieutenant Washington started seizing a few minutes ago. If she follows the progression that the others have taken, she's likely to have several more in fairly rapid succession and then she'll either slip into a brief delusional state as her fever rises or she'll go into cardiac arrest and..."

"So we're hoping for the fever?"

"Yes," Elizabeth chuckles humorlessly.

"Right. Okay, let's assume that happens. Then what?"

"And then her heart will likely give out."

"Wash is tough," he insists. "And I'm guessing her heart is, too."

"I don't doubt that, but even she can't fight this forever, Jim. This thing has already ravaged her body. Right now, there's a good chance that even if I had a cure at this moment that I couldn't save her life. And if she goes, I don't…the Commander is going to take it very hard. I don't…I don't know…."

Tears of frustration and fear streak down her face. Ignoring the distance created by the bio-suit, Jim steps forward and pulls her into his arms, holding her tight.

"Hey…hey…easy…"

She lets him hug her for several moments, almost a minute or so. And then just like that, she pulls herself back together. She slips out of his arms, and holds up her hand (and he notices how badly it's shaking). "I'm…I'm sorry. I'm okay,"

"You don't have to apologize to me," he tells her, disbelief in his tone.

"I know," she says. "But we need to focus. I need to focus."

Hearing the desperate determination in his wife's tone, he nods. "Okay, okay. Presuming you can save her if we find a cure, how much time does Wash have?"

"Most likely an hour…maybe two if we're very lucky."

"And you? How much time do you have?"

"I'm fairly early in the progression. I…I'm fine for now."

"For now," Jim repeats. He wants desperately to rub at his eyes, but can't manage it through the bio-suit. Instead, he settles for sighing, and saying, "Then let's get to it. I'll carry this guy to your lab." He leans over to pick up the body bag.

"No," she says immediately. "No way. You're not going in there."

"Liz, I'm wearing a bio-suit…"

"I don't care. I'm not taking that chance. We have three children and…if this…if I can't find a cure…Jim, they're going to need you. This whole Colony is going to."

He opens his mouth to tell her that she doesn't give a shit about the Colony. All he cares about right now is her. Without her…

She puts her fingers against the filter covering his mouth. "Jim," she says simply.

"I can't just wait around," he insists.

"Then go help Malcolm. If something happens to me, if I can't continue on for whatever reason, it's going to fall to him. He's been in his lab since this morning. There's no chance of infection. Help him."

"Okay." He holds up his hands in surrender.

She smiles at him, wistful affection in the expression.

"I love you," he tells her, echoing her sad smile.

"I love you, too, Jim. Don't give up yet."

"Wasn't planning on it. You don't either, okay?"

"I won't," she promises. At that moment, she hears the footsteps of the young male nurse that she'd left with Wash approaching from behind him (she'd seen him enter a few minutes earlier, but he'd stepped back out when he'd seen her in the middle of a moment with Jim). She turns to ask him to help her with the body bag, but stops when she sees the expression on his face. "What is it?" she asks.

"Lieutenant Washington is seizing again, ma'am."

She nods slowly, her eyes betraying no surprise, just weary understanding of the progression of this nasty little monster. "Who's with her?"

"Doctor Palmer."

"He's capable, and can take of her for now. Help me with the body."

* * *

><p>Wash takes far longer to recover from this seizure, her exhausted body trembling for several long minutes afterwards. Her eyes are glassy and confused, staring off into the distance as if she can see something no one else can. She makes a few odd muttering noises – they don't sound like actual words.<p>

While he waits for her to return to herself – fearing with each passing moment that she never will – he absently feels the sting of a needle as it goes into his arm (he thinks he recalls the nurse asking for permission, which he'd granted with the barest of shrugs), once again taking his blood. He's vaguely curious why another sample is being taken so soon after the last, but realizes that at this moment, he doesn't actually give a damn. He only cares about her.

He says her name over and over.

Wash and then Alicia.

She responds to neither, just keeps looking around like she's seeing everything and nothing at all. Her hands are shaking, spastically clenching and unclenching as her muscles vibrate beneath the force of the seizure aftershocks. Every now and again, she lets out a rumbling moan (or even – to his horror – a whimper) of pain as a particularly nasty cramp winds its way through her lithe body.

He's damn near close to saying to hell with her request for no painkillers.

Back in Somalia, when she'd been med evac'd, they'd loaded her up with all kinds of colorfully named painkillers. She'd been damn near dead thanks to three bullets to the chest, but once the drugs had flooded her system, she'd been feeling no pain at all. At least not during the flight out of the battlefield.

That's not the case right now.

Right now, she's in agony and he can see it in her eyes – as distant and unfocused as they are. And he's absolutely helpless to do anything about it.

He tries not to think about what she'd been about to say to him. He tells himself there will be time for those words later. He promises himself that he won't let her go until she's gotten the chance to tell him what she'd needed to tell him. Even if that means he won't ever let her go at all.

It's amazing to him to realize how much she means to him. Though perhaps, it really shouldn't be. Even back when she'd been just a rookie medic, he'd cared for her deeply. She'd been a kid that he'd brought into the heart of the war, and he'd turned her into a fierce soldier. He'd seen something in her – the spirit of a warrior. As time had passed and their lives had become hopelessly intertwined (they'd both saved each other more times than could reasonably be counted), she'd become a dear friend. Someone he could talk to about anything and everything. Not that he always did. But if he had ever wanted to, he'd known even then that she would be there to listen without judgment. And if he'd ever needed a sounding board, she'd be there for that, too.

Sometimes, she'd even been there to be his punching bag when he'd really needed it. After a battle that had gone horrendously south and ended up costing a third of the unit, she'd boxed with him for three straight hours, taking hit after hit (some to the face or ribs). Even when she'd had blood dripping her face, she'd never protested, never asked him to let up or slow down. He'd had to have been hurting her (a disgrace in and of itself) but she'd never let on to such.

And then, afterwards, when exhaustion had finally made him stop punching, she'd taken him out for drinks. Vodka. Whiskey. Beer. On and on.

Offering comfort should have been his job – the duty of the CO - but without saying a word or even offering up an overcooked cliché, she'd simply been there for him. Allowed him to wallow in his guilt and anger for a night.

And when it had all been over, she'd never mentioned the night again. No lines had been crossed, no reasons to feel unsettled had been provided, but even then they'd both known that what occurred between them that evening had been something intensely personal and intimate. And just between them.

"Wash," he says, "You got to stay with me. I'm not ready to lose you yet."

That seems to miraculously do the trick. Her head turns slowly towards him, her glassy eyes managing to finally – and with much pained effort – focus on him. He sees her squint as the low lights in the room burn into her retinas. He can see tears on her cheeks, and thinks to himself how angry she'd be about that.

She smiles almost lazily at him. And then she says the words that nearly break him in half, "No, sir, " she tells him, her words slurred and nearly indecipherable. And yet, he hears her perfectly. "I'm not lost."

"No, you're not," he answers, his voice choked.

She shakes her head. "No, I'm not," she says. "Because you saved me."

* * *

><p>It's getting almost impossible for Elizabeth Shannon to focus. She can feel the contagion starting to move through her, slowing her mind and her muscles. And yet with considerable force of will, she makes herself stare at the autopsy scans that are now showing up on the holo-screen.<p>

As suspected, Hallahan is, in fact, Patient Zero. He shows an almost grotesque amount of the pathogen in his bloodstream – far more than anyone else. The problem is, she's still not all that sure what the pathogen is. The chemical breakdown of it is on the screen, but that doesn't mean she knows what it is.

"Elizabeth?" she hears. She looks up and after a few blinks of her eyes (it's suddenly very bright in the room) she focuses on the image of Malcolm Wallace. She sees Jim hovering right behind him, his face a mask of frustration and fear. He's a cop not a doctor. Right now, there's nothing for him to do but wait around and hope there are people to protect when this is all over.

"I'm here," she tells him. She offers her husband a smile, one which he tries to answer, but fails miserably at.

"Good because I think I may have something."

"What is it?" she asks, leaning in, excitement suddenly lighting up her voice.

"I've been looking over the blood samples, and I came across something curious. All of the samples show the pathogen except one. Commander Taylor. Every sample we've had of his from when he was brought in to the last one that was taken about ten minutes ago show the same thing; no sign of contagion whatsoever. He appears to be – for whatever reason - completely immune."

Elizabeth nods her head, her mind whirling. "All right, we need to narrow down the why. Something in his system, something he's been exposed to or is taking or…we need to compare his sample off of the other blood –"

"Already on it, Elizabeth," Malcolm assures her. "Comparative scans are running. We should have some answers in a few minutes. Anything from Hallahan?"

"Yes. I don't know what it is exactly, but he appears to have tracked the pathogen in on his clothing. There are reddish spores all over his jacket. I found some of the same spores in his lungs. The ones on his jacket are mostly benign, but the ones inside of him look as though they actively bonded to the tissue there. From there they've spread through him, attacking any healthy tissue they can find. It's like the spores are consuming the host alive."

"Lovely. I'll re-check the samples Hallahan brought in." Malcolm turns to Jim. "Three metal boxes in the back. Can you –"

"On it," Jim replies, happy to be doing anything even if it means doing lackey work for the one guy in the colony that he can tolerate the very least.

As soon as Jim has left the room, Malcolm meets the eyes of his old friend through the screen. "I think we're close," he tells her.

"We'd better be," she replies, and then coughs harshly. A moment later, she holds up her hand and shows him the blood on it.

Malcolm slowly closes his eyes, and nods grimly, suddenly acutely aware of how short time has suddenly gotten. He looks up at her and says, "Just hang on."

* * *

><p>"Saved you?" Nathaniel repeats. "From what?"<p>

"From me," she says, her voice once again dropping. It's a good thing that he knows how to read lips (a skill he'd picked up as a necessity many years earlier).

"I don't know what you mean," he answers. It's something of a lie. He knows the aimless existence she'd been living before he'd brought her into his team. She'd been Recon and then a medic – a young soldier floating through the war with very little to fight for and almost nothing to live for.

Still, he needs to keep her talking. Talking means she's alive.

"I didn't care," she continues. "If I died, that was okay. And then you came along. And everything changed. I didn't want to die. I don't want to die. Don't let me." Her voice chokes at the end, whether from emotion or pain, he's not sure.

What he knows is that in his entire time of knowing her, he's only seen her like this once before.

When she'd been about to die thanks to those bullets on the battlefield. They'd gotten her to the helicopter quickly, drugged her up ever quicker. There'd been very little time for words, but he'd seen them all in her eyes. He'd seen the fear of death, and the sadness of regret. She'd been so young then, so full of wondering what could have been.

Now, years later, turns out those regrets are still there. Which ultimately means that she's not yet ready to lay down her arms. Not yet.

But she's not the one calling the shots. Neither of them are. Her body and this damn contagion are in control and both seem hell-bent on turning out the lights.

She smiles at him, "You were always the one everyone wanted to be around. People would have killed to be me. Isn't that funny? It's funny."

It hits him then what's going on. He glances over at the holo-display showing her vitals and sees it fluctuating wildly as her body temperature begins to spike upwards, fever raging through her.

"She doesn't know what she's saying," Reynolds says as he comes over. He's covered in a thin sheen of sweat now, too, but he could give a damn about himself. Right now, he'd give every bit of energy within him if it meant finding a way to pull Alicia through this. For him, everything that Taylor has meant to her as a CO is what Wash means to him. He'd gladly and without a second thought lay down his life for her.

"She knows," Taylor repeats. A part of him wants to send Reynolds away, wants to keep this moment private and for himself, but he sees the raw need in the younger man's eyes. Reynolds needs to be around her, offering her something.

"Sir?"

"She'd delirious, but she's still Wash. Don't ever forget that."

"No, sir," Reynolds answers, not completely sure what Taylor means by that.

It doesn't matter, though, because Wash seems completely oblivious to their presence now. Instead, she continues speaking as if she's the only one in the room – or as if she's holding a conversation with a Taylor only she can see.

"You remember that little bar we accidentally burned down? I do. I remember how pissed you were. How you asked me how I could be so stupid as to be involved in something like that?" She chuckles to herself. "I'd never felt so terrible in my life. You could do that to me."

Reynolds looks up at Taylor, suddenly feeling very uncomfortable, like he's intruding on something so intensely private that being here at all feels like a betrayal of her. "I'm going to go…back over there, sir."

"Easy," Taylor tells him. "She's not going to remember having said of this. And we're not going to tell her she did. It's okay."

"Yes, sir," Reynolds nods, feeling a ridiculous jolt of hope at Taylor's words. If the Commander believes that there will be a time later to worry about what was said, then he's still certain that she'll survive.

And if he believes that…

"You know she was beautiful, right?" Wash says suddenly, then follows it up with a low throaty chuckle. "I was so…so envious. But I loved her. You couldn't not."

"Who's she talking about?" Reynolds queries.

Taylor shakes his head as if to suggest that he doesn't know, but that, too, is a lie. He has a damned good idea of whom she speaks.

Ayani.

Even just thinking the name causes a shockwave of hurt to squeeze his heart. It's a horrific feeling – the kind you can only experience when you've suffered a nearly unimaginable loss.

Something like losing your wife.

Something like losing your dearest and oldest friend.

"Commander," they hear as Elizabeth Shannon enters the room, working purposefully towards them. "I need to speak with you immediately."

Taylor furrows his brow. "Of course, Doc. In private?" he glances down at Wash, clearly not thrilled with the idea of leaving her. She's grown quiet now, her eyes half-lidded, her body once again trembling. He wonders if she's about to experience another seizure.

"No, this is fine," Elizabeth states as she moves to the holo-screen and quickly punches up Wash's signs, frowning slightly. Her actions are almost absent-minded, like checking her patients' vitals is just something she does naturally, without even thinking. "Sir, before you went through the portal, were you administered any kind of drug? Anything to help your transition go easier?"

He blinks, clearly surprised by her question. When she turns her head to look at him, the desperate look in her eyes convinces him to take her query seriously, however. He tilts his head, as if trying to remember back almost eight long years.

Finally, shaking his head, "No, I don't believe so. Why?"

"Because everyone else was."

"Explain."

"When you went through, everyone else was supposed to as well, but that's not what happened. There was a glitch and the others – Lieutenants Washington and the rest of your team – were held back. During that time, the Science Team continued its research on information sent back by the probe."

"Okay?"

"One of the tests that was run was an atmospheric adaption simulation. They discovered that when someone who had never breathed that air went through, it caused a massive amount of shock to the system."

"We know this already."

"True, but what you might not know is that in many of the simulations, members of the team who went into shock ended up dying of asphyxiation."

"First I've heard of this," Taylor grumbles. He looks at Reynolds, who shrugs his shoulders. He'd been just a kid when he'd come through.

"Considering all we've learned about what those in the future have kept from us here, I'm not surprised. In any case, the Science Team determined that by administering a special cocktail of…let's just call them very specialized designer drugs… before someone went through, they'd be less likely to suffer extreme atmospheric shock. It severely reduced the chance of death."

"Okay so you're saying this cocktail is what caused the contagion?"

"No. Something Mr. Hannahan picked up in that field caused it. It's likely some kind of defense mechanism that came form of wildlife put on him when he came in contact with him. We're still investigating that part. What we believe, though, that what it's supposed to cause is breathing issue – it makes it so the predator can't breathe and moves off. "

"But the drug changed that?"

"We think so. We think that the cocktail - XR23 – that everyone but you received caused a secondary reaction. That's what's causing the full system shutdown. The XR-23 is moving from dormant to active and fighting the contagion like it's doing exactly what it is – stopping the body from being able to breathe. Only it's destroying every other system in the meanwhile."

"Okay," Taylor nods, his mind whirling as he tries to absorb all of the science. "Then explain to me why some of these people are dying faster and why people like Wash and Reynolds seems to be taking so much longer."

"Age is a factor, which is why Lieutenant Washington is going far faster than Reynolds, but the biggest factor is how much of the XR23 they were exposed to. It was extremely new when Alicia was given it. Over the next several pilgrimages, they've updated the dosage considerably. Everyone who saw a quick progression of the contagion was in pilgrimages six through ten."

"Except you. You seem to have held up pretty well," Reynolds notes.

"We checked that. Turns out that because of a certain iron deficiency I have, I was given a much lower dosage. I'm still infected, though."

"Okay, so we know what and why," Taylor nods. "Do you have a how to fix this?"

"We think so but it's going to take some time."

"Time," Taylor repeats, looking down at Wash again. She's grimacing through another shockwave of pain, sweat now practically streaming down her face. "Not sure we have much, Doc."

"I know," she says. "But she just needs to hold on a little bit longer. We all do."

"Understood. Get me that cure, Doc."

Elizabeth nods, and exits the room, back towards the lab where Malcolm is already at work on putting together their proposed cure.

Ignoring Reynolds now completely, Taylor sits back down next to his lieutenant. He leans in close to her ear. He puts a hand over her wrist, slowing the tremors for just a moment. "I hope you can hear me in there, Wash. I need you to hear me. Turns out after all of this that the fix for this little bastard is inside of me. I'll explain everything later, and we'll have a good old laugh about it, but for now, just understand this: they're going to use my blood to cook up something to make you better. If you can just hold on, they're going to pull you through."

He knows his words are fairly optimistic; there's a good chance that she's too far gone for any cures now. And yet he can't help but hope. Giving up isn't an option.

There's simply too much left unsaid between them.

She just needs to fight. Just a little bit longer.

Just a little bit.

**TBC…**


	6. Chapter 3 Part 4

A/N: We're almost to the end now. Thanks to everyone reading - and to the kind words offered about my personal issue. Very much appreciated. Enjoy.

* * *

><p>As horribly clichéd as it sounds (even to himself), it's starting to feel to Nathaniel Taylor like there's a giant hourglass hanging over Wash's head now, the fine sands flowing downwards, quickly and without compassion or care counting away the precious remaining minutes of her life.<p>

This is certainly some kind of deep dark hell, and he wonders if maybe this is a type of punishment for all of the sins that clutter the landscape of his past like hastily discarded coffee cups and candy wrappers.

He's done more than his fair share of things that uncomplicated men (those who have never had to make life or death choices) would call immoral. He's learned to rationalize these decisions away, but deep down in his heart, he knows that many of the choices he's made wear their clothes in varying shades of gray.

Maybe, it's time to pay up for a few of those.

He shakes his head (he's sure he looks a bit crazy to anyone who might be watching him right about now – also known as every one currently in the Infirmary). No. This isn't about him. Well it kind of is, in a very odd and warped way. The cure to this horrific contagion is within him, but no, he hadn't caused this. He hadn't done this to her. He can't be held responsible for this.

And yet he can't quite convince himself of that. Because this? This is not how it's – her dying that is - is supposed to be happening.

They're soldiers, and as such, they've long accept the likelihood of a young death (she's 36, he's 59 – they've already survived a few more battles than they probably should have to be fair). They've long accepted – at least in theory – the reality that they will probably watch the other die.

He's just not sure he ever believed it'd actually happen. He's always believed – needed to believe – that he'd go first. Far in front of her really. Simply because he'd come to understand a long time ago (even without understanding the whys and hows behind it) that losing her would gut him. Now, as he watches her struggling like hell to survive for just a few more minutes, he's realizing that it's far worse than he ever imagined. Her loss won't just gut him – it'll destroy him.

To himself he vows that if she survives this, he'll figure out just why that is because clearly, there's something going on between them that goes beyond just being comrades in arms and old friends. Quite obviously, their relationship transcends the simple affection of experiences shared through time. She means more to him, and he promises that if she lives, he'll find out exactly why.

Nathaniel Taylor – a man violently opposed to wasting precious time and energy on intensive (and generally worthless in his opinion) introspection - has never hoped to be forced to engage in a fit of soul-searching more in his life.

He looks down at Wash as she shifts anxiously on the bio- bed, her sweat-drenched body quivering as each one of her muscles seems to frantically spasm in time with her erratic heartbeat. His eyes track over to the display showing her vitals. Nothing there looks good. Nothing there seems the least bit hopeful.

Her delirium has worsened as her fever has. She's been talking – or really babbling if you want to use a more correct word - nearly nonstop for awhile now, but her words are almost too low to hear unless you're sitting right next to her.

And so he is because knowing that these might well be his last moments with her, he wants to ensure that he doesn't miss a thing. Not a sound. Not a word.

She's rambling through her past, tearing through it like a wobbly drunk who can't shut up. Every now and again, she mentions something that he has to really think to remember. She speaks of frozen nights hunkered down in dirty dark trenches, and evenings spent wasted (and wasting) away in bars. She talks of frantically hopeful mornings consumed by staring up at the smog filled sky, searching out the sun as proof of one more day survived.

He hears her mumble the names of soldiers that he hasn't thought about in years (that's not one hundred percent true – every now and again, he thinks about every one of the kids that he's lost under his command, but he always forces these thoughts away, refuses to dwell on them). She whispers the names Cory, Hardy, Bosco, Dylan. All members of their old Special Forces unit in Somalia, all very good men whom she'd considered brothers.

All young men who had been killed in action.

Hardy and Cory had died in the dark hours before Wash's near fatal wounding. Bosco and Dylan had been killed while she'd been fighting for her life in a hospital. He knows that upon waking up and hearing about what had occurred – how many lives had been lost (including Ayani's) - she had grieved for each of them deeply. That she speaks of them now – perhaps in her final minutes of life - tells him just _how_ deeply. And God if that doesn't hurt.

It's silly really to have assumed that she'd be spared the anguish and heartbreak of friends lost, but perhaps he'd permitted himself that small delusion simply because she's never spoken of them before, and he supposes that maybe he'd thought that she'd learned how to compartmentalize better than most.

And maybe she had, but that doesn't mean that the pain of their losses had ever really left her soul. Each of those men had saved her life at some time or another and she'd saved each of theirs in turn. She'd broken bread with them (and other things such as the jaws of other men in drunken brawls) and told stories of childhood triumph and pain. They'd laughed and screamed, argued and fought. They'd been family. You never forget family. No matter how much you try.

It's the sound of her saying – gasping really - his name that pulls him back to her and away from the memories of the horrific deaths of the men that he had once upon a time recruited, trained and cared so terribly deeply for. "Nathaniel," she whispers, her dark eyes staring up at the ceiling. He knows she's not seeing anything anymore, her vision likely little more than a hazy red wall of fever.

"I'm here, Wash," he says, absently holding out his arm as another nurse approaches to take yet another blood sample. If he wasn't so worried right now, he'd be more than a little amused. Or annoyed. He's not terribly sure which.

If she hears him or understands what he's saying, she shows no sign of it. "Nathaniel," she calls out again. He reaches out and places a hand on her sweat-soaked brow, his own furrowing as he tries to figure out what she's thinking about. He wonders where she is in their history together. What day of hell.

"Wash, I'm here. Right here."

Her head jerks almost spastically from side to side. "Sir, we need to get out of here. We need to leave right now." She pauses as if hearing his reply. Then, her voice even more urgent now, she insists, "You need to listen to me. Please. We…I can't lose you, sir. We have to go." Her words come out in a frantic burst of air, each falling over the next. He has to strain to both hear and understand.

And even then, he's still lost.

"Sir?" Reynolds asks, suddenly standing next to him. The boy looks even worse now; it seems that he's finally hit the rapid degradation off-ramp that Wash has been cruising down for the last few hours.

"You should be lying down, son," Taylor answers, his eyes already back on Wash. Her face and neck muscles are tight, showing the white hot tension of whatever delusion she's trapped within in.

Reynolds ignores Taylor's words, his wide eyes full of things no young man should know about such as the fear of death and the fear of loss. Reynolds is no innocent child, he's been a soldier in the Terra Nova service for a couple of years now, and thus has seen more than his fair share of pain and hurt, but that doesn't offer any solace to Taylor. Those, after all, had been the very things that he had been trying to get away from by jumping eighty-five millions years into the past.

"What is she talking about, sir?" Reynolds queries, his eyes on his CO. His relationship with Wash goes back a few years, almost to his first hours in the Colony. He'd volunteered in the future to be a soldier in the past – offered himself to serve beneath the great mythical Nathaniel Taylor. Little had he known that it would be Taylor's second who would become the person he'd grow to idolize.

It takes Taylor a few moments to respond to that as he tears open his own memory box, looking for a transcript of the conversation that Wash seems to be repeating. She's still speaking, of course, still demanding that he find cover, that he think about himself for once in his damned life. She's practically – and rather insubordinately – ordering him to get the hell out of Dodge.

"The end," Taylor finally replies with a humorless chuckle as the memories just about coldcock him. It feels a bit like having ice water splashed in his face. "That was the end of things." He shakes his head. "Almost the end of her."

Almost instinctively, he reaches for her hand, squeezing it tight beneath his own, only exhaling air once he feels her pulse radiating up through her fingers.

"I don't understand," Reynolds replies before coughing twice, the painful hacks sounding terribly wet. He's clearly starting to reach the same stage Wash had entered hours earlier – when they'd put her on oxygen (which Taylor notices she's somehow again yanked off of herself).

For a moment, Taylor considers brushing the boy off. This past belongs to he and Wash, and what had occurred all those years ago is terribly personal. And yet looking up at Reynolds, seeing the eyes of somehow who feels so strongly for his lieutenant, and who would grieve her loss just as horribly (well maybe not _just_ as horribly), it's enough to loosen his tongue a little.

"Our last mission together in Somalia, we realized a bit too late that the enemy had intentionally set up the kind of situation that they knew my team would be brought in to fix. Once we figured out what was going on, our options were continue on or retreat. Sound military logic said that we should have turned around. We knew if we went in that we'd likely suffer mass casualties. They eventually realized we were trying to figure out what to do so they made sure that we knew what they planned to do to any survivors. To me specifically. They wanted us to retreat. They wanted to embarrass us. So of course, we went in."

"Wash tried to talk you out of it?" Reynolds queries, looking surprised.

"Don't misunderstand, Reynolds. She wasn't afraid for herself. She was afraid for me. They made it clear that they planned to make an example – no, a show - of me in every single way possible. Both alive and dead. I reminded her that this is the job, that we do this knowing every day that if we get caught, we'll be in for a kind of hell that most people could only begin to imagine. But she already knew that. Don't know if you know it, but Wash did a few weeks in captivity herself."

"I didn't know, sir."

Taylor nods thoughtfully, his mind many years in the past. "She did. Got grabbed with two of my other boys on a recon run. We eventually found the POW Camp, tore it to the goddamned ground, and got two of the three out. She and another young soldier named Bosco. They were both hurt pretty bad. They'd been both been put through pain most people couldn't even begin to imagine so yeah, she knew what I'd go through. But then so did I. It wouldn't have been my first round of torture had I been captured. She wasn't having it. Kept pushing. One of the very few times I had to forcibly pull rank on her and shut her down."

"Because it's the job."

Taylor nods. "That's right. It's the job and so we do what we have to do. That day in Somalia, that's what we do – we what we had to do, what we were supposed to do. We did our duty, and we went in, and we fought like hell, and they fought like hell. When the dust had cleared, somehow or another, we'd won. At least on paper." He looks down at Wash, who he realizes has stopped speaking, and has instead has fallen into what appears to be a light slumber. Her body is still shaking (which he's oddly glad for because it means she's still alive), but she seems almost calm. His eyes still on her, he continues in a quiet almost reflective tone, "Wash took three bullets to the chest, had to be med evac'd out. I lost something like thirty-five percent of my team that night. On the other hand, the enemy was one hundred percent decimated so I suppose that was a win."

Taylor is frowning as he says this, the images so painfully clear in his mind. He can see with perfect clarity the moments where Bo Hardy and Jon Cory had been killed. Hardy had died instantly, a bullet between his eyes. Cory had been killed by an explosion. And just seconds after that, as Wash had rushed to Cory's aide, she'd taken three bullets to the chest, dropping to the wet ground immediately, her face going white as blood had flowed freely from her pierced body.

"Yes, sir," Reynolds says quietly, then coughs again.

That's enough to make Taylor look at him, his frown deepening. "I guess now I get to pull rank on you. You need to go lie down now. That's an order, son."

"Sir…"

Taylor chuckles. "I'd forgotten; you really don't listen to orders well, do you?"

At that, Reynolds pales a bit, thinking of the time when he and Maddy had entered Taylor's office to find a clearly delusional Taylor with a knife. Wash – calm and cool as ever - had saved all of their lives that day.

Before he can reply, though, Taylor softens his tone and says, "Doc Shannon is working on a cure right now. Hopefully it'll be ready in time to save everyone in this room. But if that's going to happen, you need to be smart. Go lie down. Conserve your energy and your strength." He nods towards Wash, who's still sleeping, her body growing terrifyingly quieter. "She'd tell you to do the same."

"All due respect, but no she wouldn't," Reynolds counters with a chuckle that makes Taylor lift an eyebrow. He nods at Reynolds to continue so the younger man does so with a fond smile "She would tell me once to go lie down, and then without even waiting for me to do it, she'd then forcibly push me down, and make me do it. The lieutenant gets what the lieutenants wants, sir."

Taylor laughs – and it's such an odd sound in the middle of the gloom and doom of this Infirmary that it makes everyone turn their heads towards him "Indeed," he nods. "So go lay down so that when she wakes up in a few hours, I don't get my ass kicked for letting you run around sick."

"You kidding me? It's going to be my ass getting kicked for talking her into joining us at the bar last night."

"What's done is done," Taylor answers. "And I know for a fact that Wash enjoys going out with all of you just as I did when I was in her place."

"Yes, sir," Reynolds nods, understanding that he's basically being in the most gentle way possible told not to second guess the dedication and affection Wash feels for her people. With that, the younger man turns and heads back over to the bio-bed he has been assigned to.

To wait.

* * *

><p>Jim Shannon is freaking out. He's never been a man capable of hiding his emotions well. When he's angry, he has no problem letting others know it. When he's happy, he's never seen a reason to hide it or control it.<p>

Right now, he sees no point in disguising the fear streaking through him.

Because in that Infirmary are at least three people he cares about – his wife, Wash and Reynolds. And all three of them are very sick.

He paces behind Malcolm, watching as the doctor scrambles to put the pieces of the medical puzzle together. Elizabeth is visible on the view screen.

And dammit if she doesn't look terrible.

She's clearly wearing down now – a brutal combination of the contagion and her exhaustion. She's been working on this nightmare almost since the first patient had been brought in. In that time, she's treated handfuls of patients, and pronounced death on at least a dozen of them.

It's no stretch to say that she's melting down and quick.

But he knows his wife better than that; she's tough, and despite the weariness he sees burning in her eyes, he knows that she'll fight this thing to her last breath.

Just as he knows Wash will.

It's an absurd thing really, but perhaps stupidly, he still honest to God believes that she'll find a way to pull through this thing.

Because this is fucking Wash, and it seems utterly preposterous that she's going to allow a little virus or whatever the hell this is to be what takes her out of this world. No, when Wash goes down, it's going to be at the point of a knife or the crack of a gun. Maybe at the teeth of a Carno or a Slasher. But not like this.

And what about Reynolds? The boy isn't even twenty yet, and yeah, Jim has his issues with the whole dating his daughter thing (he'd have issues with anyone, to be fair), but if he has to absolutely be forced to accept someone, well maybe Reynolds ain't so bad. He's a good kid really. And he's -

"All right," he hears Elizabeth say between painful sounding coughs. He looks up sharply, his eyes sweeping over her. She doesn't give him long to think about how she's doing before she says, "I think I've completed the first build."

"Very good. I'll start the simulations," Malcolm nods, his fingers flying over his keypad. "Start up a second build one so we can confirm the integrity."

"Already on it," Elizabeth answers, accepting another blood sample from one of her nurses as he enters the room.

Jim leans forward, into Malcolm's bubble. He feels the doctor shift, agitated by the loss of personal space, but frankly Jim doesn't care. "What's that mean? Finished a build of what?"

Elizabeth looks up at him, and he thinks that he sees tears in her eyes. Tears of what, though, he can't be sure. "It means that we essentially have a…uh, working draft of what might be the cure to this. It means we might be close."

No sooner has she got the last word out than a loud siren fills the room she's in.

"What's that?" Jim asks.

Elizabeth doesn't answer. Instead, eyes wide with a kind of fear he's not used to seeing on her face, she jumps up, and rushes from the room.

"Malcolm, what does that sound mean?" Jim demands, though he's pretty sure he has a good idea what that sound was and what it means.

The end of life.

In a tone suggesting a calm that Malcolm doesn't at all feel, he replies quietly, confirming Jim's assumptions, "It means that someone's heart just stopped."

* * *

><p>The room is full of chaotic nervous energy when Elizabeth enters it. Ice in her gut, she rushes to the bio-bed of Lieutenant Washington. "What do we have?" she asks as she passes by the side of a white-faced Nathaniel Taylor.<p>

Medical terms are spit out at her. Fast. Faster. She absorbs them all like they're a second language, her brain immediately translating each. Her hands start moving before she's even quite determined what the correct course of action is.

She hears Taylor speaking to her, begging her to do something – find a way to save Wash. She's never heard him talk like this, never heard this kind of panic in his voice. Distantly, she's aware that everything else in the room has stopped.

Everybody is watching this.

As she moves around the bio-bed, touching buttons on non-physical screens suspended in the air, she sees the soldiers in the room coming closer. She can feel the presence of Reynolds as he comes to stand next to Taylor.

She chooses not to focus on the men, though. She knows what they're feeling, knows what losing Wash will do to the morale of everyone in the room.

And she has a pretty damn good idea of what it will do to Taylor.

The pressure inside of her builds, but she doesn't shrink back from it. Elizabeth Shannon has never shrunk back from fear or pressure in her entire life. It's just simply not her way. Instead, with the same steely determination that had convinced her to try to rescue her husband from prison, she focuses on the solutions – focuses on getting Wash's heart started again.

That's all that matters.

She drums her fingers over the panel, administering the first shock, then when that fails to bring the necessary results, a second one.

It's the third shock that gets her heart beating again. It's the third one that brings Wash back to life for at least a few minutes.

Probably for only a few minutes.

They've brought a couple others back for five…maybe ten minutes, but they've never brought someone back twice. Elizabeth knows for damn sure that she won't be able to bring Wash back again if her heart stops beating once more.

Which means time has run out.

It's time to throw out the normal rulebook and maybe get a little bit risky.

What is there to lose?

Nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

* * *

><p>This is not how this is done. You don't create a cure and fail to properly test it. It's madness to do it that way. No, you need to at least run a few simulations, ensure that the so-called cure doesn't carry with it a whole load of other problems.<p>

Yeah, Elizabeth believes firmly – absolutely - in the practice of patience and method and procedure. Has her entire life.

Until right now.

She storms back into her office, ignoring the faces of Jim and Malcolm staring at through the screen. She doesn't hear Malcolm asking her what she's doing. Instead, she pushes a hypo into the computer, punches several keys and watches as it fills the syringe with a yellowish-green liquid that has been created using Taylor's blood. This, she hopes – needs to believe - is the cure.

Yeah, it's one hell of a Hail Mary.

It probably has no chance of succeeding. The damage is likely already done, the contagions' tendrils too far reaching inside the lieutenant's body to turn back.

That cold understanding of this doesn't stop her from rushing back over to where Wash is lying, unconscious and unmoving. It doesn't stop her from injecting the hypo directly into the lieutenants' bloodstream.

It sure doesn't stop her from staring at the screen and hoping for a miracle.

**TBC...**


	7. Chapter 3 Part 5

A/N: And finally, we have reached the end. This piece was originally conceived as a quick three-shot piece with about 1K for each story. We can clearly see how that worked out. I hope that this last part satisfies. In the end, I just couldn't. As always, thank you for your kind words all throughout.

* * *

><p>It's a fairly crisp morning about five days later, (four since he'd been released from the Infirmary and cleared to resume his duties as he head of Terra Nova) and considering the almost obscenely early hour, by all rights, Commander Nathaniel Taylor should still be sound asleep in his bed (well as sound asleep as he ever gets, which truly isn't much).<p>

And yet here he is, standing outside of his house, dressed in little more than his typical attire of cargos and a simple black shirt. His cobalt eyes are locked on the blanket of stars twinkling brightly above him.

He's had a hell of a time time focusing his mind over the last few days. Too many thoughts of life and death. Pain and loss.

When he really thinks about it, these things have been unwanted companions all of his life – almost faithfully so.

He thinks about being a boy of fifteen, considered tough by his friends, but blissfully unaware of the cold realties of the world around him. To the arrogant teenaged version of him, the word loss was only used when your bike got stolen or when you misplaced a large wad of cash.

He thinks about the day that had all changed. His father had pulled him out of school and taken him out fishing. After they'd caught a couple large beauties, his dad had told him (with tears in his eyes, Nathaniel will never forget that detail for as long as he lives) that his mother had been diagnosed with an incurable type of cancer. He remembers his old man telling him to be strong.

Since that day, he's had to weather more notices of impending loss than he can remember. Sometimes there are no notices. Sometimes, things and people are just taken from you, and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it.

He remembers holding his mothers' hand as she had died, a distant strange smile upon her face, like she'd been staring at something incredible in front of her. He remembers watching as Ayani had passed away, her normally bright and warm eyes fading away to a sightless hazy gleam.

Two women he had loved dearly. Two women he'd lost too soon, their losses ripping a hole out of his soul that could never be filled.

He thanks whatever deity there might be (it's hard for him to completely believe in one after all the pain that he has witnessed, caused, and endured) that he didn't have to go through that again.

He's simply not sure he could have.

* * *

><p>She finally comes to six days after Elizabeth Shannon had injected a cure laced with Nathaniel Taylor's blood into her veins. During the extended time that she has been unconscious – and still listed as being in serious condition – everyone else who had been exposed to the pathogen has been released from the Infirmary. Some of the survivors are still on home bed-rest, but most of them have bounced back extremely well. Most are already back to their normal lives.<p>

Everyone except her.

When she opens her eyes, the first thing that Alicia Washington realizes is that there's a breathing mask over her mouth and nose. It's pumping pure oxygen into her, which makes her feel just a little bit light-headed, kind of like she's floating.

Slowly, after first yanking off the breathing mask, she sits up on the bio-bed, her painfully stiff muscles crying out in protest. Every part of her aches, and feels almost alien to her. She can feel a strange kind of – she's loathe to call it weakness - fatigue deep in her very sore bones.

She looks around, noticing that she's in a private room. "He..hello?" she calls out, amazed by the rawness she hears in her own voice. She coughs a couple of times to clear her throat, wincing as she does so. She's about to push herself up and off the bed when the door opens.

"Lieutenant," she hears as the door opens. Elizabeth Shannon enters, smiling widely. There are bags under her eyes suggestion that even though she, too, had been infected, she's been pretty much working around the clock for the last week. "Welcome back." She approaches and lightly lays a hand on Wash's shoulder, gently pushing her back down onto the bio-bed.

"Back?" Wash places a hand over her chest, feeling a deep ache there. If she didn't know better, she'd think it was her heart, but that's preposterous.

"How much do you remember?" Elizabeth asks as she starts tapping keys on the see-through screen that had suddenly appeared in the middle of the air. Vitals fly up on it. She frowns slightly as she takes in the blood pressure reading. It's clear that the lieutenant is agitated.

"Uh…remind me…"

"You remember getting sick?" Elizabeth asks, stepping over to Wash's side. She pulls out a stethoscope, and going completely old school just for the hell of it, she takes a listen at the lieutenant's heart. " After going out to the bar?" she prompts.

Wash thinks about that for a moment. What does she remember? Mark. The bar. Right. She'd joined him and several of the boys for a live music show and some drinks following a long shift. She recalls crawling into bed afterwards, slightly buzzed (not drunk, though, she'd never allow herself to get really drunk while out with the men that she commands – that's a very basic Nathaniel Taylor rule). And then she remembers waking up, her body already shaking thanks to fever.

"What did I get?" Wash asks, bringing a hand to her forehead.

"A pathogen that was brought back by one of Malcolm's researchers. He infected everyone at the club. There were….fatalities. Eighteen of them."

"And me? Did I nearly died?" Wash asks.

"You did die, Alicia," Elizabeth says gently. "Your heart stopped, but we brought you back. You're going to be all right."

Wash shrugs her shoulders, like what she's hearing doesn't bother her at all. She even tosses in half a smile. "Wouldn't be the first time my heart stopped."

"So the Commander told me," Elizabeth chuckles. "I understand it happened on the med evacuation out of Somalia as well, yes?"

"Yeah, it did." Then, looking up sharply, alarm and fear in her dark eyes. "Wait a minute. "Nathaniel…he…touched me. He…I…did I infect him? Is…is he okay?"

"Relax, Alicia, he's just fine. In fact, it was his blood that helped us cure this."

"What?"

"It's fairly complicated, and if you want, I'll explain everything later. Right now, I want you to rest."

"Haven't I been?"

"I wouldn't call being in a coma resting."

"No, I suppose not," Wash replies, reaching up with one of her hands to anxiously rub at the back of her neck. What she's hearing from Elizabeth explains the fatigue she feels, and why her body feels so odd to her, but it doesn't explain the strange melancholy that had suddenly swept over her.

It almost feels like fear, but no, that can't possibly be right. Must just be anxiety or something like that.

"Besides, you're going to want to conserve your energy. I'm sure the Commander will be by soon – he's been in for several hours every day."

Wash doesn't allow herself more than a small smile on that. She appreciates his worry all while hating that it's directed towards her. She can't really stand the idea of him seeing her weak. So, changing the subject as quickly as she can manage, "When can I go back to my quarters?"

"You're…you're joking right?" Elizabeth asks, genuinely stunned. She's been the chief medical officer as it were for Terra Nova for going on a year now, and has thus gotten used to dealing with the stubbornness of soldiers, but having one of them ask to be released less than five minutes after waking up from a six-day-long coma that had been brought on by heart failure…well that amazes even her.

"No. I want to get back to my own bed. I assume my place has been cleaned?"

"It has," a deep voice says. She looks up to see her CO enter the room, his eyebrow lifted in amusement. There's something else there, too, but what it is, she can't quite place. "I had it scrubbed top to bottom, and it's testing completely negative for the pathogen. Good to see you awake, Wash."

"Sir. I was just telling the doctor that I'm ready to be released."

"Are you now?"

"Yes, sir."

He laughs, then turns to Elizabeth, who has an expression of confusion on her face. "The lieutenant," he explains, "has something of a reputation for doing this. After she got shot, and despite the fact that anytime she moved she ripped open the wounds, she tried to leave the hospital as soon as she was able to sit up."

Wash rolls her eyes, but doesn't correct him.

"This was after your life-threatening shooting? The other time your heart stopped?" Elizabeth queries, frowning slightly.

"Yes," Wash admits. There's something in her eyes, something distant and bothered, like she, too, is thinking about the past. Her hand drifts back up to her chest, her palm settling gently over where her heart is.

"I heard all of that from the doctor who treated her," Taylor says. "Who was utterly exasperated with her."

"He was also an utter jackass," Wash informs them.

"Didn't you date him for three months?" Taylor asks.

"I was going through a lot," Wash drawls, refocusing herself on the conversation at hand. "And he kept forcing painkillers on me. Screwed up my judgment."

"That's what it was?"

"Yes. And it wasn't really 'dating', sir. It was a couple lunches in the arboretum of the VA hospital together." She looks up at Elizabeth. "Doc, can I go?"

"Absolutely not," Elizabeth huffs. "You just woke up. I'm not releasing you until I'm sure you're completely out of the roads and on your way to a full recovery, and that's the end of this discussion, am I understood, Lieutenant?"

"Yes ma'am," Wash grits out.

"Good. Commander, I'll leave you with the lieutenant for now, but I expect you to let her rest as soon as possible. No matter what she says, she's exhausted."

"Understood, Doc. And uh, perhaps you should do the same?"

"Sir?"

"I mean go home and get some rest, Doc. You need it. She's awake. You've done a great job," Taylor prods gently. He and Elizabeth lock eyes, having their own small battle of wills. Finally, Elizabeth nods sharply, then exits the room.

"I don't remember anything," Wash says once Elizabeth is gone. "Nothing beyond you helping me to the Infirmary."

"That's probably a good thing. It wasn't any fun."

"No, doesn't seem like it was," Wash answers, her fingers lightly rubbing against her chest. Then, when it looks like Nathaniel is about to say something, she smiles at him (he doesn't miss that the expression doesn't come close to reaching her eyes), "I think maybe the Doc is right. I am tired."

"You want me to leave so you can sleep?"

"Please."

"All right." And then, before she stop him (or he can think better of the action and stop himself), he leans down and kisses her lightly on the top of the hair, an arm gently reaching around her to give her a squeezing half-hug.

It's an utterly un-Nathaniel Taylor thing to do. It says everything about just how afraid of losing her he'd been. And how terrifyingly close he'd come.

* * *

><p>Elizabeth finally releases her back to her own quarters exactly a week later. She provides the lieutenant with several different pill bottles (take this one once a day, this one twice, this one after a full meal) – all of them meant to help along her recovery, and help her regain her strength.<p>

Taylor, who has been by every evening to see her for a few minutes (just a few before she inevitably sends him away pleading exhaustion) comes to pick her up, and bring her back to her place. That alone annoys her, but she says nothing about it. It's either that or a medical accompaniment, and she sure as hell isn't about to get walked across the grounds of Terra Nova by two nurses.

Just as they're leaving, Elizabeth comes up to Taylor, and gently touches his arm. "Might I have a word in private before you go, Commander?"

"Certainly. Give us just a minute, Wash."

The lieutenant waves her hand absently, pretty sure that the conversation they're about to have is about her. It's obnoxious, but not at all unexpected.

"What's up, Doc?" Taylor asks once they're in her office. He leans against the wall, his eyes quickly flittering around the room, taking in all of the pictures. He smiles a bit at the many photos of her children in various stages of aging.

"I wanted to talk to you about Alicia's…state of mind."

"Something wrong?" Taylor asks, frowning.

"I think there is. Look, I know you're going to blow off what I'm about to say, but please at least pretend to listen, all right? I think the lieutenant is taking what happened to her – her heart stopping – much harder than you would think she would. I think it's unnerved her quite a bit."

"That doesn't make any sense, Doc. This time doesn't even begin to compare to what happened to her in Somalia," Taylor answers. "She's tired and not quite herself yet, but she's not full of holes like she was then."

"I understand that, but over the last week, surely you've noticed how withdrawn she's been. Even when you're here."

"She's been exhausted."

"Certainly. I'm just saying, Commander, I don't think she's all right, and I think pretending otherwise does her no favors."

"I appreciate your concern, Doc, but she's a soldier. She'll get through this. It's what we do." He steps towards her, then reaches out and very lightly touches her shoulder. "Don't worry, I'll keep an eye on her."

"That's all I ask."

He nods, then steps back out to where Wash is waiting. She's an impatient woman by nature – something she has always fought to control using the uniform of a soldier. Now, though, dressed in civilian clothes and absent her trusty firearm, she's having a hard time masking her fidgety annoyance.

"Ready to get the hell out of here, Wash?"

"More than ready, sir." They step outside the glass doors of the Infirmary together, Wash wincing as sunlight beams down on her. It's not terribly bright out on this day, but to her, with her eyes as sensitive as they still are, it feels a bit like she's staring directly into the sun. "What was that about?" she asks.

"Doc's worried about you."

"Isn't that what they do? Worry, I mean?"

"It is. And we pretend we're fine. That's what we do."

"No pretending here, sir. I am fine."

He reaches out and takes her arm, turning her slightly towards him. "You are?"

He meets her eyes, tries to get her to make a connection with him. And for half a second, she does. What he sees there, he doesn't like. It looks like fear, and that frankly scares the shit out of him because Alicia Washington is scared of nothing.

She breaks the connection almost immediately, retreating a step before crossing her arms over her chest and nodding, "I'm fine, sir. Just very tired."

"You know you're off duty until that's not the case, right?"

"Sir…"

"Wash, I'm not having you out there until you're fully charged again. What we do is insane enough. I'm not having you half-assed out there."

She wonders for a moment if he's playing a game – she's been using the exhaustion excuse to get him to leave her alone for the last week. It was only a matter of time before he used it against her.

"Fine," she reluctantly agrees. "As you say, sir." Then she continues walking towards her house, which they're just a few yards away from now.

"I'll come by tonight?" he calls after her.

She turns back towards him. "You don't need to."

"What if I want to?"

"You're hovering, Nathaniel." Her tone is almost gentle when she says this.

"Turnaround is fair play," he smirks.

It works; she chuckles. But then, quickly growing entirely too serious, she replies with, "Honestly, sir, I'm fine. I just want a few days to do nothing but sleep in my own bed, and as you said, recharge. So I can get back to duty."

"Fair enough, Lieutenant. I'll give you through the weekend – three days, and then I'm coming over to see you. Those are my terms. Take 'em or leave 'em."

She rolls her eyes. "I guess then I'll take them, sir." Then she turns and heads into her house, shutting the door behind her.

As she disappears from sight – his oldest friend, best lieutenant and so very much more - he stares after her, his expression now one of deep concern.

Maybe Doc Shannon had been right.

Then again, who knows Wash better than he does? She just needs a few days.

She'll be fine.

Just fine.

* * *

><p>It's ultimately Jim Shannon who – after two days and several conversations with Elizabeth - decides that Wash isn't fine, and she's not going to get there all on her own like all of the soldiers around here seem to think. He's a cop; he full-on understands the unspoken rules about being strong and tough and never showing weakness. He knows what's expected of those in command.<p>

He also knows that almost dying fucks up even the toughest of souls. Especially when you're someone like Wash, and you almost give up the ghost while lying flat on your back while attached to several beeping machines.

He knocks on her door the second night after she's been released from the Infirmary. It's only about eight in the evening, but it's fairly quiet about – mostly owing to the fact that it's pretty cold out. When there's no answer, he knocks again. And keeps doing it until the door rips open revealing the lieutenant.

The very clearly drunk lieutenant.

"Shannon," she snorts. She's standing in front of him, her long black hair down around her shoulders, wearing light gray sweatpants and a charcoal colored tank. Her clothing is entirely too little and too light for this weather, but he's guessing all the alcohol she's been consuming has warmed her up just fine.

"Wash," he greets. "Been drinking alone?" He glances over her shoulder, taking in the row of tall empty bottles sitting on her coffee table.

She stares back at him. Okay then, so she's not a happy drunk for sure. But she doesn't quite seem mean either so maybe more…belligerent?

"Mind if I come in?" he asks.

"Yes."

"Great." He pushes past her, and into her house. He's surprised to see it messy and unkept, a stark difference from the last time he'd been in here. Normally, this place is a model of military cleanliness, never anything out of place, rarely a spot of dust to be found anywhere. Right now, it's a bloody pigsty.

"Shannon, I'm not in the mood for your bullshit tonight," she growls. Considering the rank smell of liquor practically pouring off of her, he's amazed that she can talk at all. Or walk for that matter. But she's doing both more than capably.

"Okay then I'll try to keep it to a minimum. Wash, I've been where you are."

"Where I am? Where's that?"

"Scared."

She's on him before he can even think about, fisting his shirt with both hands, and slamming him roughly against the wall. His back collides solidly, painfully. "I'm not scared," she hisses. Her eyes are wide with fury.

All right then, so maybe a mean drunk is what she is. Wonderful.

"Okay. Well I am, Wash," he says, a slight nervous chuckle in his tone. "So if you could let go so we could talk maybe? That'd be…real nice, huh?" He slides a hand up and places it over hers, giving it a gentle nudge.

As if suddenly realizing what she's doing, she lets go and steps back quickly. The fury is gone now, replaces by some strange cocktail of shame and self-loathing. It's bizarre on her, and he finds that he hates even the thought of it.

"Wash…"

"Leave. Please."

He straightens his shirt out, then lifts his eyes to her, adopting the gaze he uses when he's trying to get through to one of his children. "What you're going through right now, we can help you. Me, the Commander. Liz. Talk to us."

"I'm fine, Shannon. I'm not going through anything."

"So this is just for kicks?"

"I was thirsty."

"Uh huh. You died, Wash."

She shakes her head. "I'm here."

"Yes, you are, but that doesn't mean…"

"It means everything. Now leave or I'll throw you out, and don't think for a minute I can't do it. I'm pretty strong when I'm…like this."

"You're pretty strong when you're not," he answers with a slightly amused smile. "But all right, I'll go. For now. But you need anything, Wash…we're friends. I'm here…there…wherever you need me, okay?"

For a moment, he thinks he sees her eyes soften, but as quickly as the frightening vulnerability appears, it disappears, and she's got him by the arm. She pulls him to the door, and pushes him out. "Goodnight, Shannon."

"Goodnight, Lieutenant," he answers as the door slams in his face. Then, his lips setting into a grim line and his jaw setting hard as determination overtakes him, he heads off towards the Command Tower.

* * *

><p>The Commander is finishing up a meeting with Guzman when Jim enters. Both men take immediate notice of the urgency on the sheriff's face.<p>

"Shannon?" Taylor asks, stepping towards him. "What's wrong?"

"We need to talk," Jim answers. "About…Wash. Sir."

A look at Taylor, and Guzman quickly gets the hint that this a conversation that he probably shouldn't be part of. "I, uh, need to be getting home, sir. Unless you need me for…anything else, sir?"

Taylor looks at Jim as if asking if whatever is going on with Wash will require the assistance of his other lieutenant. Jim shakes his head in the negative.

"No, go ahead, Guz."

Once he's gone, Taylor quickly reduces the distance between he and Jim down to about two feet. If not for the fact that Jim has become somewhat used to soldiers around here having absolutely no respect for personal space, he'd be a bit unsettled by the aggressive move. As it is, he takes little notice of it.

"What's going on?"

"I stopped by her place, sir. She's uh…smashed."

"Smashed?"

"Drunk, Commander."

"I know what smashed means, Shannon." He sighs, one of his hands lifting to gently rub at his beard. "Your wife said she was taking this hard."

"I think she was right."

"Doesn't make sense. She came just as close to dying in Somalia."

"All due respect, sir, if I understand right, you weren't there for the immediate aftermath. Maybe she went through this back then, too."

"No. She was busy with recovery and that doctor fellow she was sort of seeing. I don't think she was never really alone long enough to be allowed to go through this. Besides, this isn't really about almost dying."

"It's not?"

"No. It's the how. And I should have seen this coming."

Jim nods. "You mean she's having trouble with having almost died from a virus or whatever that was instead of a bullet?"

"We're men of action, Shannon. Women in her case. We expect to die on our feet, fighting the good fight. Protecting people. It's what she's come to peace with. When the time comes…" he stops for a minute, amazed by how much the thought of that burns at him especially after having just narrowly escaped such, "…when the time comes, she'll accept that kind of death. It's worthy. But this…"

"Are you all right, Commander?"

"I need to see her."

"That's kind of why I came here. I figured maybe you could get through to her. I sure as hell couldn't."

"She belligerent?"

"I'd say so. She threw me against a wall."

"Typical. When Wash drinks a little, she lightens up. When she drinks a lot, she becomes a real ass. I've seen her clear out an entire bar that way."

"Awesome."

"Not really. Only time she's ever punched me in fifteen years of knowing her was when she was drunk. Damn near broke my nose." Taylor says as he reaches into his desk drawer, picks something up, and slides it into his pocket.

"Sounds like a hell of a story."

"It is, but I'll let her tell you it when this is all over."

"I look forward to it."

"As do I. Thanks, Shannon," Taylor nods as he moves past the cop.

"Anytime, Commander."

* * *

><p>Even as drunk as she is (though far from hammered – that's still a good ways down the road, she figures), she's not one bit surprised to see Nathaniel arrive on her doorstep less than twenty minutes after Shannon had left. She knows the cop by now, knows that he's just not the type to leave well enough alone. Damn man wouldn't last three days in the military before someone kicked his ass but good for being an obnoxious meddler.<p>

Don't they all understand that right now, she just doesn't want to think about what almost happened? She wants to forget, not dream at all. She wants to allow her mind to shut down. Don't they get that the alcohol does that? Why is that so damned hard?

"Wash," Nathaniel calls as out he enters her house, using his private key.

"I didn't invite you in," she growls from the couch. She's got a glass of whiskey – or what passes for it around here – in her hand.

"And I'll apologize for that in the morning. You look like hell, Lieutenant."

"I'm not on duty, sir."

"You're my second in command. It's part of your job to always be respectable."

"Oh, no, no, no. I'm on medical leave. Right now I don't have a job." She stands up and crosses over to him, sliding close enough for him to smell the alcohol. It doesn't mix well with her normally earthy clean smell. "Right now," she continues, laughing humorlessly, "I don't have to listen you. You, sir, are just an intruder in my house." She puts a hand on his chest, and gives him a bit of a push.

Oh, yeah, belligerent.

He sighs. She's in no state to reason with right now so it's time to take a different approach on this.

"I'm sorry," he says.

She blinks. "For what?"

"For this."

In less time than it takes for her to blink, he's behind her, executing a perfect chokehold. He doesn't apply much pressure – he doesn't need to. Instead, he reaches into his pocket, pulls out a hypo and presses it against her neck. Less than a second later, she collapses into his arms, dead unconscious.

As gently as possible, he lifts her up into his arms, brings her into her bedroom, and lays her down on the bed. He pulls a blanket up over her. For a moment, he just watches her. Studies her, takes in her sleeping form.

She's going through something right now, but she's alive.

Dear God, she's alive.

He lies his body down next to hers, and slides an arm over her, pulling her against his chest. She'd probably protest if she was in her right mind, but since she's not, he allows himself to indulge in the sensation of holding her.

Strangely enough, he doesn't feel the least bit bad about it.

* * *

><p>She wakes up about two hours later (the sedative in the hypo is light – she's actually out for longer than most people are), and seeming completely ignorant of his presence, she jumps from the bed, and stumbles to the bathroom. He's not a bit surprised to hear her throwing up a few seconds later.<p>

Slowly, taking care not to startle her, he comes behind her, kneeling behind her, and pulling her hair out of the way with one hand. With the other, he lightly kneads her neck muscles, feeling the tension there.

"Nathaniel?" she whispers weakly.

"I'm right here," he assures her. "I got you."

She half turns towards him, her left hand reaching out to aggressively clutch at his shirt. "Don't leave me. Please…"

He puts his hand over hers. "I'd never do that, Wash. Never."

She doesn't reply to that, just falls backwards into his arms again.

* * *

><p>When he comes to just before daybreak, he's not at all surprised to find that she's already left the bed. After listening for a moment or two, he can hear her shower running in the bathroom. He allows himself a moment to dwell on the reality that he'd spent the night in her bed, holding her in his arms.<p>

And she'd let him.

Then again, she'd been drunk and exhausted so he's not sure he should allow his mind to make too much of that.

And yet, it does. And not just because he'd enjoyed the feel of her in his arms (though that's there, too, for sure) but because holding her had meant that she'd still been with him.

Still alive. And really, nothing matters more than that.

Not even the strange and decidedly non-platonic feelings for her that have suddenly surged to the surface for him. It'd be a lie to call them completely new (there's been something for awhile, he knows) but the sudden strength of them is a bit of a revelation.

Rising, he makes his way out to the front room, and after a quick bit of neatening up (which includes tossing out several bottles – he figures she had gotten most of these from Boylan, who will need to be spoken to, clearly), he moves on to making breakfast in her kitchen.

She emerges from her bedroom about ten minutes later, in loose non-uniform khakis and a light gray pullover. She's clearly not thrilled to see him still around.

"Nathaniel," she says softly.

"Morning, Wash, how was the shower?"

"Fine, sir."

"Good. Go on and sit down. Breakfast will be up in just a minute. Egg and cheese omelet work for you?"

"I'm not really hungry."

He nods as if he'd expected that, but if she thinks that means he's about to let her off the hook, she has another thing coming. "Well, it's either eat breakfast with me, Lieutenant, or I let the Doc know you've been existing on nothing but alcohol since she released you. I'm guessing she won't be pleased."

"You think Shannon hasn't already told her that?" Wash growls as she drops herself down into one of the chairs next to the kitchen table. She picks at the tablecloth there, rubbing the fabric between her fingers absently.

"Probably has so I'd expect a drop-by by the Doc sometime today for sure. But honestly, Wash, that doesn't concern me. You concern me."

"Sir…"

He steps away from the stove, and towards her. As he comes over to her, she sees that he has a glass of orange juice in one hand and two aspirin in the other. When he gives them to her, neither of them makes a comment about them (or the raging headache she's pretending not to have). Instead, he presses forward.

"You and me, Wash, we've almost died a hundred times. You actually have twice. And we're both fools if we don't realize how badly that can screw us up."

"I'm fine, sir."

"You can that as many times as you'd like, Lieutenant, but no, you're not. So, because we're old friends, I'm going to give you a choice: you can either talk to me and work this out with me or I'll put your ass on the bench until you do."

"Sir…"

"Don't test me, Wash. You know I'll do it."

"It's stupid," she mutters.

"Of course it is, but that doesn't make it any less valid." He sits down next to her.

"The food is going to burn, sir."

"I turned the stove off, Wash. Talk."

"Would you?"

He shrugs.

"Didn't think so."

"Well, then I guess it's a really good that I'm the Commander and you're the Lieutenant. You have to follow my orders."

"I'm still off-duty."

He chuckles. "Well I see we've come full circle – from stubborn to belligerent to petulant." He meets her eyes, waits for her to smile just a bit, then, when it's clear that she's not in the mood to be joked into submission, he says softly. "Please."

The stark honesty and almost frantic need she hears in his voice melts her. She glances down at her hands for a minute before finally looking up and meeting his eyes. "I never saw it coming."

"Getting sick?"

She nods. "When I'm out in the jungle, I might as well be back in Somalia. I'm on edge. There's not a moment that goes by where I don't expect to get shot or attacked. Every second, I'm checking every angle, listening to every sound. If someone gets me, it's going to be because they're better than me or because there are more of them than me. I'm never going to get caught unaware."

He nods his head in agreement of her words, but says nothing.

"But that's exactly what happened here isn't it? When this thing got…infected me, I was sitting at a bar drinking beer with the boys. I honestly don't remember anything past you helping me to the Infirmary. There's just nothing there. I never saw it coming. I couldn't fight it."

"Sometimes we can't know everything coming our way. This one…Wash, no one – not even you - could have seen it coming. It's a risk we run being out here. That doesn't mean we let ourselves fall apart."

"I didn't."

"You slammed Shannon up against a wall last night."

She winces at the foggy memory of that.

"Exactly. Now he's a big boy, and can more than handle it, but that's not you, Wash. You don't lose control like that."

"But I did. I had no control."

He smiles sadly at that. "Neither did I. For the second time since I've known you, I just had to sit there and watch you die."

It's an astonishing confession from him, one said so plainly and simply that it just about robs her of air as well as her ability to speak.

"When we're in the field and you get shot out, I can try to draw fire away from you," he continues, unable to conceal the painful emotion in his tone. "When a Slasher is coming in, I can distract him. But when you're on a cot coughing up blood, all I can do is…hold your hand."

As if to show her, he reaches out and takes her hand. The touch is warm and strong, and immediately, she feels like a lifeline has been thrown out to her.

"Look at me, Wash."

She does as ordered, meeting his light eyes with her much darker ones.

"You may not remember much of what happened in the Infirmary, but I damn well do. I remember every moment. And it was hell. But we got lucky again." He reaches up and touches her face. "You're right here. You made it. We both did."

"I feel like such an idiot."

He chuckles at that. "Join the club of not being perfect all the time, Wash."

"You deserve better than that."

"From you or from the people who serve under me?"

"Both."

"Well I guess I'll have to make do with the finest officer I've ever had the pleasure of fighting in the trenches with as well as the best damn friend I've ever had."

His words hit her hard, and she has no reply to that. Instead, she blinks her eyes furiously, then dips her head away from him.

"Wash…"

"You saved me," she says, looking up at him. He sees the way her eyes are glistening, but in true Wash fashion, she hasn't let a single tear escape.

He tilts his head. "You mean my blood?" He knows that she'd been informed of what exactly the cure had contained within it.

"That, too, but no, you saved me…as a person. If I'd never met you…"

He cuts her off. "But you did. And maybe, Wash, maybe it goes both ways."

"Sir?"

"I just mean, we've been pretty good for each other in the long run."

"Yes, sir, I suppose we have."

"Glad to hear it," he chirps. "So now that that's settled, I'm going to go ahead and finish up breakfast. I want you to eat as much of it as you can. You're going to need the energy for when you have to deal with the Shannons."

"Both of them?"

"Well, the Doc is going to be by to hound you about getting drunk while recovering, and you know you pretty owe him an apology."

She groans.

"And Wash?"

"Sir?"

"I meant what I said last night. I'd never leave you. You and me, Lieutenant, we're pretty much stuck together."

And then suddenly, without warning, he leans across and kisses her on the lips. It's a decidedly chaste kiss, but not at all without heat or passion. It seems to be offering more without demanding it. Offering a choice with no strings attached.

Her reply is simply to reach up, place a hand on either cheek and hold the kiss for a long moment, enjoying the feel of his lips against hers. She's far from ready to make the choice yet, but it's sure nice to have it finally on the table.

After a bit, he breaks away and heads back over to the stove. For her part, she settles back against the chair, sips her orange juice, and watches him cook.

* * *

><p>Turns out that it's actually easier to deal with Elizabeth Shannon than it is to deal with Jim. When the Doc drops by halfway through the day, she brings with her only a lot of well meaning concern and a semi-stern lecture about taking better care of herself. She offers to be there for the lieutenant should she ever feel the need to speak to someone who isn't in the business of trying to act tough.<p>

That makes Wash laugh even though it probably shouldn't.

Later that evening, though, she tackles the harder of the two – the Shannon that she can usually control with a hard glare or a quick icy glance.

He's in the marketplace, frowning at different varieties of vegetables when she approaches from behind him. She watches for a moment as picks a pink one up, turns it over in his hands, then sets it back down with an expression of disgust.

"Tastes like squash," the lieutenant says as she moves to stand next to him.

He turns his head, lifts an eyebrow, and says with entirely too much mirth, "So you're saying this thing tastes like squash? Wash?"

"Hysterical, Shannon."

"You know, considering I think you're probably here to apologize for manhandling me last night, I think you have to laugh at my jokes."

"Okay. Make a joke and I'll laugh at it."

He chuckles. Then, "Feeling better?"

"I am."

"Good. You had me worried." His brow is furrowed, and he's not joking around even a little bit now. It's a tad bit unsettling.

"I had a bad night," she tells him, hoping he'll drop the subject. She knows better.

"I'm not just talking about last night."

She shifts anxiously at that.

"You don't really handle the idea of people caring about you very well do you?"

"I don't know what you mean by that."

"Yeah, you do. You're so used to worrying about everyone else: Taylor, the kids on your squad, the colony. You have no idea what it's like for someone else to care about you. And if they try to tell you they do, you retreat."

"Look, Shannon, I didn't come for…this. I just wanted to apologize for how I was last night. I was out of control, and there was no excuse. I'm sorry."

"No excuse? Hey, I get it."

"Please don't make this difficult just because you can, Shannon."

He grins at that. "I think you just said the magic words, Wash. Because I can."

She sighs. "Fine. Tell me what I have to say to end this conversation."

"Really?"

"Shannon."

Seeing her on-edge as she's suddenly become, he decides to let her off the hook. "Okay, fine, I'll leave you alone if you tell me one thing."

"What?"

"The story of you punching out the Commander."

She lifts an eyebrow. "He told you about that?"

"Told me you clean broke his nose."

"I was a bit stressed. And it was years ago. The man never forgets anything."

"Can't blame him; hard to forget you coming at someone like you do, Wash. You're pretty damned intimidating."

She glares at him.

"See? Intimidating. Now, tell me the story."

"It was during one of our leaves. I was drinking at a bar, a bartender friend of his who knew I was one of his people called him, he came to collect me, I told him I didn't want to go, he insisted we leave, and I decked him. End of story."

"Nuh uh. I don't think so. That…uh…that kind of sounds life the cliff notes version of the story. I want all the details. All of them."

"And then I can go home?"

"And then we're all forgiven."

"Fine. Walk with me."

He grins. "Glad to, Wash."

She simply rolls her eyes at that.

* * *

><p>She returns to duty almost a month after the day she'd nearly died for the second time. By then, she's at pretty much full strength again, but Taylor makes it almost immediately clear to her that until she's absolutely one hundred percent, there's no way she's going outside of the gates.<p>

She argues with him, but it's pointless.

Besides, she knows that he's just using her light duty downtime to get a few more OTG missions for himself before she grabs them back from him.

When he returns after a long three-day venture to one of the outposts, she's waiting for him behind his desk, a plexpad in her hand.

"You're up late," he says to her as he enters, a bag over his shoulder.

She looks up, and offers him a small smile. "No, you're late, sir. You were due back three hours ago."

"Shannon was driving."

"So you got lost?"

"That's about right," Nathaniel chuckles. "What are you looking over?"

"Requisition forms. I didn't miss these."

"I'd imagine not. Why don't you wrap up for the night and head home."

"Sounds like a good idea."

She stands up, wincing slightly as her knee first connects with the bony underside of his desk. When she looks up at him, he's smirking at her.

They walk down the steps together, then almost all the way to the fork that leads to their homes, which are in opposite directions (the idea had been not to group the senior officers' homes too close in case something – like maybe an explosion - had taken out one part of the colony) before either one of them says a word.

"You know I couldn't do this without you, right?" he asks, turning towards her.

"Yes, you could, sir, but I appreciate you –"

"You're not hearing me, Wash. I need you at my side. If what happened that day has taught me anything, it's that you and I are stronger fighting together."

She can't argue that so she doesn't. Instead, she tilts her head. "What are you saying?"

He shrugs. "I don't know, honestly. I just know…

This time, she's the one who acts before she can talk herself out of it. While he's trying to find the right words, she leans up and kisses him. She feels his arms slide around her as he holds her to him.

When they finally break away from each other, he's as confused as she is, but neither of them is the least bit displeased.

"You realize these feelings we're both having could just be fear of what almost happened?" she says to him. She's lying to herself, of course – she's had feelings for him for a very long time. But maybe, she rationalizes, the fact that he suddenly appears to be reciprocating, that's where the fear comes in.

He nods. "Possible."

"I don't want something built on that."

"Then maybe we should slow down. Figure out if there's anything there before we jump down that road."

"Are you saying you're going to try to court me?" she teases.

He laughs. "Is that such a bad idea?"

"No, but it doesn't really fit us."

"No, it doesn't. So we just…"

"See what happens."

"I think I can do that."

She considers inviting him, but instead nods. Slow it down. Make it real.

"See you in the morning, Nathaniel."

"You, too, Wash." And then he leans over and kisses her again. Gentle, sweet.

He's gone a moment later, his footfalls disappearing down the rocky walk, leaving behind nothing but the sound of silence.

Quiet and full of hope and promise for once.

**-Fin**


End file.
